Ulnar.
The ancient Xel’naga temple of Ulnar was the resting place of the Xel’naga. It also served as a portal into the void. Here laid the corpse of dozens of Xel’naga who Amon betrayed and slaughtered.
According to the laws of physics, even by protoss standards, Ulnar shouldn’t exist.
But now, outside this forbidden temple stood the largest fleet the sector has seen.
700 Purifier capital ships made up the bulk of the expedition forces. Everything was yellow. Motherships. Carriers. Tempests. Inside the hulls of the motherships and carriers were millions of Purifier units. Delta sat at her throne in her flagship, where she watched over her forces like a golden queen.
150 Warden battlecruisers seemed pale compared to the Purifiers, but their nuclear arsenal and firepower was still a force to be reckoned with. These Warden B-1s and B-2s contained the top terran technology in the sector. Jean remained at one of the largest B-2s. Viper stood by her.
Over 600 ships, the best of the Death Fleet, were on the right of the Warden fleet. Nyon was well aware of the danger of Amon if he was to be left alive. Finishing him off was crucial to the future survival of the Tal’darim race. Despite heavy casualties the Tal’darim endured during the Second Battle of Korhal, Nyon still placed his fleet in the expedition. It was worth noting that he left the younglings, as well as all the wounded warriors and damaged ships, on Slayn. This was so that if the expedition went terribly wrong, the Tal’darim race wouldn’t be completely wiped out from the surface of this sector. One of the most important duties of the Highlord was to ensure the survival of his race.
The Swarm spread out behind all three other fleets. The Swarm had an easier role in the Second Battle of Korhal. First, they faced Alarak’s fleet, which was only pretending to fight. Then, they dove into the Golden Armada, who only tried to delay the Swarm and turned most of their firepower on the Purifiers. The Swarm barely took any losses.
Then again, in a battlefield like the void, there was very little the biological Swarm could do, but the Swarm wasn’t what Jean wanted. She wanted Kerrigan, the Queen of Blades.
Another thing worth noting was that Jean was fairly certain Ouros chose to give his Xel’naga power to Kerrigan for a reason. Why didn't Ouros give the power to Artanis or Alarak? Both weren’t too weak compared to Kerrigan. Instead, Ouros chose a killer who had more blood on her hand than anyone else.
Jean had some theories about the reasoning behind the decision, but the reasoning didn't matter. Likely, Ouros wouldn’t be satisfied enough to make someone other than Kerrigan Xel’naga, which made Kerrigan’s presence a must. Jean toyed with the idea of seizing Ouros by force and making him pass his Xel’naga essence to her, but she doubted she could force a god to submit.
What could she do to him? Threaten his life? He was already dying.
There was no need to take the tremendous risk. She was programmed to gain strength, not to be needlessly greedy.
The Dominion didn't send a single ship. Last Jean heard, Valerian was planning on resigning. Nova, who now served Valerian, seemed to have objections, but Jean didn't bother spending time on the Dominion anymore. They could no longer provide anything to her.
Zeratul appeared in front of Jean. The only Xel’naga expert Jean had, he was sent to open the portal at Ulnar. His return meant it was a successful task.
Jean opened the comms to Delta.
“Send a vanguard of Purifiers in first. See if you can clean a way for our biological forces.”
“Affirmative.”
A fleet of Purifiers, about fifty ships, moved toward the temple. Delta placed a copy of her personality onto the flagship of that fleet. As the ships got closer, the Ulnar temple shined so bright everyone, even Kerrigan and Jean, had to close their eyes. When they opened their eyes again, the Purifier fleet was gone.
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Narud sensed the hostile fleet the moment it entered the void.
But instead of feeling angry and threatened, Narud was thrilled.
After being chased all the way back to the void, Narud didn't even dare to return to see Amon. Instead, he cowered at the outer rim of the void, behind layers of his own void shadows. He knew very well that, after losing everything Amon set up in the Koprulu Sector, the dark god wouldn’t show him a sense of mercy. See Amon again, and he would be a dead Xel’naga.
But deep down Narud knew his life was already on a timer. Amon wouldn’t let someone like him live for long.
Was Narud afraid of dying? Of course. If he was fearless, he wouldn’t have sided with Amon and would instead have chosen to die fighting with his fellow Xel’naga.
The presence of the invaders provided a new chance for Narud. Destroy them, and Amon might change his mind about Narud.
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Immediately, after sending a notification to Amon, Narud mobilized all the void shadows under his command at the hostile fleet.
Inside the Purifier flagship, the copy of Delta started issuing orders. Jean didn't know if the Purifier network could transport Delta’s conscious back to the material world if she was killed, and she wasn’t taking any chances. Instead of sending the Purifier leader, Jean sent a copy of her personality, placed within one of her dozens of reserve shells.
“Engage the enemy. Use all weapons! Send a ship back through the portal and tell Executor it is safe to cross!”
The Purifier machine of war started to turn. The advance fleet consisted of thirty carriers, twenty tempests, one mothership, and one thousand fighters. This was just a small fraction of the Purifier Fleet. Their goal was to determine if it the other end of the portal was safe for crossing. In other words, if the other end of the portal happened to be in the middle of an ambush, losing the advance fleet was better than losing the entire fleet. In this case, since it was possible to hold the landing grounds, Delta’s duplicate signaled the rest of the fleet to cross over.
All the advance fleet had to do was buy enough time so the main fleet would’ve be overwhelmed the moment it warps in.
Fighters and interceptors formed the first line of defense against the ocean of darkness. Tempests and carriers fired their kinetic matrixes and purification beams at the void shadows. Even the mothership started blasting its weapons.
The void shadows took the form of any air unit in the material world. This went from motherships to scourges. Even worse, Narud was giving it everything he had. Creating and maintaining void shadows needed energy, but Narud was an immortal who had nothing much to work on. His void shadows were in the hundreds of millions, and one tenth of them were air units. Granted, only a small fraction of them took the form of capital ships, but given the characteristic of void shadows, it was seriously a fleet to be reckoned with.
If that was just the forces with Narud, then how many units did Amon have?
All the Purifier laser beams hit the sea of shadows and seemed to have just disappeared. In reality, they did quite the damage. A dozen capital ships were hit, but they kept on going. Even if one or two of them were destroyed and reduced to basic void energy, the rest simply continued to push forward. Void shadows were basically puppets. They had neither thoughts nor emotions. The Purifier attack was nothing compared to the size of the void shadow army.
Another round of Purifier bombardment resulted in a similar result.
“Fighters, charge.”
The one thousand mirages and scouts, along with tens of thousands of interceptors, darted toward the void shadows. Their pilots held the trigger down. When everything the pilots could see was enemies, it was damn hard to miss. Ion cannons and anti-matter missiles plowed through the void shadows, but even the explosions were quickly covered by the layers and layers of void shadows. The interceptors attacked, but they were designed as a swarm. When they were the ones outnumbered, their lack of means of defense proved to be a critical weakness. All sorts of void shadow attacks dismantled the interceptors and brought them down in balls of flames. The scouts and mirages survived a little longer, but within moments, the first line of Purifiers was surrounded and obliterated. The void shadows in the front were temporarily delayed by the Purifier fighters, but this only meant the shadows on the side could circle to the back of the fighters and cut off their retreat.
Purifier capital ships continued to fire. There wasn’t a threat for friendly fire because all the fighters were already gone by the time the fire support arrived. Again, the bombardment pushed the void shadows back a little, but the darkness quickly returned with twice the momentum.
As the void shadows got into firing range, all the photon cannons embedded on the carriers and motherships started blasting. They weren’t as powerful as the main guns of carriers and tempests, but they surely were much more plentiful in numbers. For a moment, all the light armored void shadow flyers were beaten back. Mutalisks, scourges, vikings, wraiths, and phoenixes found themselves gunned down quickly.
Unfortunately, the void shadows weren’t exactly lacking armor. Thousands of carriers, battlecruisers, and even leviathans encroached on the Purifier fleet. Photon cannon rounds bounced off their armor like they were balloons hitting a metal wall.
“Tempests, target enemy capital ships. Carriers, provide cover fire.”
The order was delivered near instantly and was carried out in just moments. The carriers formed something of a wall, only allowing some openings for the tempests to fire through. Meanwhile, they turned their ships to the side so the maximum number of photon cannons could be blasting at the same time. There weren’t enough carriers to cover the tempests 360 degrees, so Delta threw down a series of time warps to complete the defenses.
It was cute, but sometimes sheer number and brute force could just beat tactical cleverness.
The void shadows didn't even try to find an opening in the defenses. They just pushed forward like ocean waves washing over a piece of coral. Thousands of smaller flyers surrounded a single Purifier carrier and started chewing through its shields. Each carrier was like a porcupine with all its firepower, but the void shadows were like a horde of fearless wolves. They attacked the carriers and ripped them apart piece by piece with no regard of their own casualties. Every carrier self destructed and brought down an army of void shadows to hell with them, but the void shadows were simply endless.
When the carriers were gone, so were the tempests. In fact, despite being better protected, the tempests went down before the carriers due to their lack of shields and static defenses.
The mothership was the last one standing, but it was under siege as well. Armies of void shadows crashed into its shield, weakening it before they were turned back to void energy. The Purification beam on the mothership was overloaded to the point it was literally melting, but it still wasn’t enough.
Suddenly, the space behind the battlefield twitched, and six hundred fifty more yellow capital ships and one hundred white terran battlecruisers jumped in.
The entire area was still under the influence of void shards, but Jean was able to send in nearly all of her mechanical forces, who were practically immune to the life draining ability of the shards. This included all of the Purifiers and most of her Wardens.
The cornered mothership blinked and jumped to behind the Allied fleet. Its warp drive was always online. Previously it didn't jump because it would be a pointless waste of energy. Now, things have changed.
The void shadows continued to charge, but this time the Purifiers were ready. Delta’s copy wasn’t sleeping when the void shadows engaged her fleet. Inside her CPU, she was calculating for the most efficient way to deal with the void shards. As soon as Delta’s fleet jumped in, the copy uploaded the calculated ideal tactics to the Purifier data network, which Delta immediately downloaded.
In other words, it was the Purifiers’ term to strike.