Twenty minutes later, all the protoss guards were cleared and all building destroyed, and Jean was on the surface of the planet connecting to one of the stasis lock. All the other statis locks were guarded by Warden forces as well.
The protoss technology wasn’t even remotely similar with the terran ones. Terran technologies were based on electric circuits and codes. Protoss technologies were based on crystals and psionic energies. The two were vastly different, making it tough for one race to hack into that of another.
But Jean wouldn’t let that stop her.
“Protect me.” Jean knelt down beside the statis lock. There was a crystal beside the lock. Nova nodded and stood guard with her canister rifle raised. Around her, unknown to the agent, dozens of Warden ghosts were present as well to make sure Jean could continue her job safely.
Jean reached out to the crystal beside the lock with her psi energy. Just like she thought, the crystal was something like a terran AI. It was programmed to aid the protoss that came here to unlock the stasis locks. As her hands touched the crystal, she was met with a paragraph of protoss words. The paragraph was conveyed to her psionically. The lock automatically assumed she was a protoss. After all, when the purifiers were sealed off and the stasis locks were designed the protoss empire had met neither the terran nor the zerg. As far as they knew only the protoss had psionic abilities of this degree.
Jean didn’t know any protoss language, but she managed to use her connection with the tal’darim to create an electronic dictionary of the most used protoss words. It was stored in her own computer system and available whenever she needed it. The tal’darim and the rest of the protoss were two fractions, but their language was the same.
Jean conveyed her idea in Khalani, the protoss language, to the crystal with a psionic message.
“I am an envoy of the Protoss Empire. I have orders to open the stasis locks.” Jean abused the backwardness of the crystal. The crystal AI was stupid, very stupid. Perhaps afraid of an advanced AI joining its purifier brethren, the Protoss Empire made this crystal extremely stupid. It was practically a message board.
“Stasis locks can only be opened by a Megalith.” The protoss AI.
Jean was not expecting this, but then again this was reasonable. The Cybros was a prison, not a landmark where anyone could just come over and check out. Just like opening a prison gate needed the credentials from higher authority, opening the Cybros needed the Megalith to prove the legitimacy of the action.
It just so happened that Jean didn’t have that legitimacy. She couldn’t just go to Shakurus and say “hey, can I borrow your top secret high tech vessel to unlock an army your ancestors locked up thousands of years ago?”
“Where is the Megalith?” Jean made another attempt. She just hoped it wasn’t somewhere deep in the protoss territory.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“According to the most recent update, the Megalith is stored in this location.” A name appeared in Jean’s mind. It was a familiar one.
Glacius. A research facility.
Jean didn’t know Hierarch Artanis had been attempting to rebuild the purifiers to help in the war against enemies from all fronts. In the research facility of Glacius, the Khalai caste had been working on the remake of the fearsome robotic army. AIs were copied, and sentinels and sentries were already being produced.
Artanis knew about Endion and the Cybros, and he knew very well of the importance of the Megalith. Anyone with the Megalith could get into the Cybros and do whatever he wanted to the sleeping and therefore defenseless purifiers. However, there was a reason he kept such an important vessel in a research facility instead of in the middle of the Golden Armada. This was the same reason of why, even after Aiur was overran and the protoss race was in danger of extinction, Artanis didn’t wake the Purifiers and use them against the swarm.
Once upon a time the purifiers rebelled against the other the Protoss Empire, their creators. Granted it was because the purifiers were treated unfairly and seen as tools and even slaves, but that didn’t change the fact that the purifiers were once enemies of the Conclave. There was no telling what they would do if they were to be awoken. The protoss society felt it too risky to wake the purifiers. If the purifiers wanted to avenge their past, then the Daeleem would have another powerful enemy. The situation wasn’t desperate enough for the twilight council to agree to take such a great risk.
Artanis was the hierarch of the Daeleem, but he didn’t have unlimited power. The idea of waking the purifiers was rejected by everyone. Even his own student Selendis frowned upon the idea. For their entire lives the templar had been taught that the purifier betrayed the biological protoss and wrecked war and havoc on the Protoss Empire. Hundreds of years of brainwashing was pretty effective.
Faced with immense political pressure, Artanis was forced to give up his idea of working with the purifiers, at least for now. Still, even though his proposal was rejected, Artanis feared that he might one day need the Purifiers. He sent the Megalith to the facility of Glacius and stored the vessel there as a backup plan. If anything went really wrong with the Golden Armada and the Daeleem, then he could get to Glacius and take the Megalith to Endion to summon the purifiers and hope for the best. That was what happened during the End War after the Golden Armada was controlled by Amon.
Artanis wasn’t considering the chance of the Megalith being taken away by some enemy from Glacius, and he had a good reason. Glacius was protected by an entire fleet of Daeleem ships, including 12 carriers and over 200 fighters and support ships. The facility also had a number of orbital cannons capable of doing massive damage to capital ships in high orbit. The place wasn’t a soft target. Anyone that wanted to take down the fortress required a large fleet.
Jean was well aware of that in the memories she received. In the memory Glacius was extremely vulnerable after the End War. First Ascendant Alarak led his fleet to the facility and used his mothership’s purification beam to melt the entire facility. However, Alarak conquered the facility so easily because the portion of Golden Armada guarding the place was suddenly controlled and just left the place undefended. The orbital cannons did some damage, but that wasn’t enough to stop the Death Fleet.
Unfortunately Jean wasn’t so lucky. The defenses of Glacius was at its peak. If she just warped there and opened fire her fleet would suffer heavy losses. Reinforcements from the Golden Armada could arrive anytime. She needed to play this cleverly.
Jean stood back up and made a silent order for a group of Warden forces to guard the locks. Nova looked at Jean. “Is it done?”
“Not quite. We need to go get the key for these locks.” Jean said casually. “Let’s get back onto the Beetle. Adjutant, get me Nyon.”