Birthright:
Chapter 4 – The Pilgrimage -By Jeff Barrett
Upon his return to Shakuras, Conrad began to ponder his future. He knew that wherever he was, those around him were in danger. He wanted to protect the Protoss from the atrocities that Mengsk would gladly dispense to recapture him. He came to the decision to leave Shakuras behind, and fulfil his plans alone.
“I’ve never seen such a weapon,” Artanis said. They stood in a long room in the New Antioch Nexus. Conrad had brought the laser rifle, hoping it was in fact built by the Protoss. “I can’t even see what it could do.”
Conrad hoisted the weapon, pointed it at the wall, and blasted a hole into the next room. Through the hole, he could see half a dozen Protoss staring back at him. “What?” he said, “Nothing to see here.”
Artanis was not amused by demonstration, but he was amazed and horrified at the power of the weapon. “All we can do is be glad that we have this gun now, and the Dominion doesn’t.”
“Excuse me?” Conrad said. “Did you listen to anything I’ve said here? This gun was in a storage locker in a prison ward.” Artanis clearly did not understand the significance of this. “If they have one of these in such an unimportant area, I guarantee the Dominion is mass producing these things. I wouldn’t be shocked if they start arming soldiers with them within a few months, if they haven’t already.”
“But that isn’t possible, don’t you see?” Artanis said, “Khaydarin crystals don’t exist anywhere in the Koprulu Sector!”
Conrad became annoyed, and stepped toward the Protoss. “Tell me, Preator,” he said, his voice thick with sarcasm, “how many Protoss ships have been shot down in Terran Space? How many abandoned colonies of yours are under Dominion control? How many bases have you lost? Every ship, building, and warrior that died in there carried Khaydarin in some form. All they need to do is go pick it up.” He held the weapon up to Artanis. “Let’s say you only lost one Arbiter out there. That Arbiter has enough Khaydarin in it to build a thousand of these.”
Artanis backed away from Conrad, and began an almost toneless recitation of a long string of numbers, many of them exceeding the hundreds, even the thousands. He didn’t have to explain. He was listing the casualties of the many battles the Protoss had fought in the Koprulu Sector, both against Terran or Zerg enemies, and within their own, during the Aeon of Strife, when several colonies were completely wiped out in the area. “If what you say is true, then the Dominion has enough Khaydarin to arm their entire Marine Corps with those weapons. If they launch a retaliatory attack for your attack on Mengsk, we won’t stand a chance.”
“If they retaliate, it won’t be against you. I can’t stay among the Protoss. The longer I stay, the more danger I put you all in.” Conrad said, heading for the exit. “I still have my communicator. If Shakuras or Aiur ever needs my services, they are openly available.”
***
Conrad took his leave of New Antioch, bidding his farewell to Jazin, and collecting his belongings at the Citidel. As he was preparing to leave, Jazin entered his chamber, and gave him a small, flat crystal. “Take the next shuttle up to the shipyards,” he said, “Give this to a dock worker, they’ll have a ship for you.”
Conrad thanked him, and left for the Stargate. There, he boarded a shuttle, and watched Shakuras fall out from beneath him.
As he waited for his ship to be readied, Conrad studied the construction processes of the Protoss. So much like the Zerg, he thought, But so much less. He watched massive construction drones assemble ships at a dizzying pace, but he realized how dangerous this all was. The Protoss had only five construction sites. One of these was in New Antioch, where all of their buildings were constructed. He stood in the second, the only remaining Protoss shipyard. Others were scattered around Shakuras, and produced the various war machines of the Protoss. The entire process allowed rapid deployment, using warp rifts, in any location in the galaxy. The Protoss, in their own right, were a hive race. They were all linked in a collective, allowing them to operate with the utmost efficiency. But he knew that, despite the overwhelming power of Protoss technology, they were the most vulnerable known race. The Protoss are very meticulous. This had bothered Conrad for as long as he had lived among them. They insisted on maintaining all of their production within a few locations, to keep tight reigns on the processes involved. But they never seemed to understand the liability this opened them up to. The Terrans maintained hundreds of production nodes. An enemy could attack and destroy any one of them, and not have an effect on the overall war. But here, one surgical attack could confine the Protoss to Shakruas, destroy their space faring abilities, and cripple their military. The Zerg, however… Now there was the ultimate in production efficiency. The very ground in an infested area produced the Zerg war machine. Zerg warriors were born into war. Terrans took fifteen to twenty years to prepare for combat. Protoss took a hundred years before they became warriors. That was why the Zerg would win the war. Conrad knew this. He also knew that he could not allow himself to be on the losing end of a war. Not when the cost of losing was complete extinction.
He was startled from his reverie when a Protoss called his name. His ship was ready. He was lead through the shipyards to a large “holding area” which held a number of old Dark Templar ships, obsolete Protoss ships, and Terran ships, all awaiting recycling and rebirth as new ships, or being held for study. He looked out at the many strange designs. He passed one ship that looked not unlike the old legendary “flying saucers” of Earth, wrecked battlecruisers, he even saw an old Kel-Morian Gunboat of a make abandoned during the Guild Wars.
At one docking slot, he stopped, and stared in utter disbelief at what he saw. His guide looked back and said, “That’s not your ship.”
“What the hell is that thing?” Conrad said. The massive ship was at least three times the length and twice the width of a Protoss Carrier. It had a gargantuan white dome at the front, with six smaller domes down each side of it. Extending from the rear of the ship was a long arching “tail.” Every surface of the ship bristled with what were unmistakably weapons.
“We don’t know.” The guide said. “A scouting party found it drifting in deep space a few months ago, completely empty. They thought it was Xel’naga. As far as the Protoss traveled, we only know of four space fairing races. Protoss, Terran, Zerg, and Xel’naga.”
“So, this is a Xel’naga ship?” Conrad asked in awe.
“No,” the guide said. “We don’t know what it is. It can’t be Xel’naga. The only knowledge that remains about Xel’naga ships is that they used Khaydarin power sources. This thing used a matter-antimatter reaction.”
If only I could get my hands on a ship like that… Conrad thought. “Well… let’s go,” he said. He couldn’t shake the image of that massive warship from his mind. He knew that if there was any race in the universe that could stand against the Zerg, it was the creators of that ship. But how could he find where the race lived, or even if it still lived at all? He decided it was not worth the effort to search them out.
He was brought to his ship. Before Conrad even saw it, his guide began to rattle off its characteristics. “The ship is a class three battlecruiser. It is staffed with Umojan androids. It was used by the Confederates in a reckless scouting mission twenty years ago, was lost, and reported destroyed.”
Conrad looked at the ship. Class three cruisers were slightly larger than their newer class five counterparts. Lacking the power of the Yamato gun, they more than made up for it, with twenty-two laser batteries, fourteen fore and eight aft. When the class three was in use, the paradigm of space combat was massive capitol ships hammering on each other from a thousand kilometers away for days until one of them could no longer fire. Its weapons were slow and powerful, and its armor made its interior smaller than the downsized battle cruisers that replaced it.
Conrad looked the ship over. Given the choice, he would sooner take a class four than this thing. And that was only if he couldn’t have that other alien ship. But this would suit his purposes. “I’ll take it,” he said, as if he was a paying customer.
***
Aboard was a level of automation unheard of in the Dominion fleet. The entire ship was built to run unmanned. Each station was filled by a fixed-position android. The bridge, indeed the whole ship, was filled with a thick layer of dust. The ship had been drifting in space for twenty years before it was salvaged near Shakuras.
He knew enough about Protoss protocol not to radio for clearance. He looked around him at the ship. “Computer?” he said. He heard a soft, distorted beep. “Computer, bring the ship to normal power.”
The deck under him trembled. Dull sounds began to filter up through the bowels of the ship to him. For a few, cliffhanging seconds, he was afraid the reactor would blow, taking him and half the shipyard with it. But it finally held, and the cruiser came to life. The androids began to operate, and the various systems came online. “Computer, prepare the ship to depart,” he said.
It was several hours before the ship brought itself under control, and pulled away from the yards. As he accelerated away from Shakuras, he contemplated a name for his ship. He ordered his robotic crew to set a course for Aiur. He was forced to manually enter the coordinates, the location, for that matter the existence of Aiur was unknown when the ship was lost in space twenty years earlier.
Once the ship was ready, Conrad gave the order to engage the warp drive. The cruiser shimmered, and vanished from space. To an outside observer, the transit was normal, even uneventful. But to Conrad, on the inside, nothing went right. The ship groaned, and the deck shook. The bridge was filled with the sound of the ship’s paneling tearing from the bulkheads. When the ship emerged into normal space, the blackened world of Aiur spread before him on the flickering viewscreen. Conrad’s jaw dropped when he saw the ruined planet. Huge tracks were a sickening hue of purple. Hive clusters so massive they consumed continents. These Zerg were rogues. Their Overmind was dead, the Cerebrates had been killed, and Kerrigan had never come to claim them. Here was a world closed to the universe. Zerg wandered mindlessly over the fields, killing everything they saw. Hives merrily went on hatching whatever they had been set to produce just before their Cerebrates died. A few rag-tag Terran and Protoss armies lived entrenched in fear. This was life reduced beyond its basics. Death, and living within death, nothing more.
Conrad, meanwhile, left his new ship in the small dropship nestled in its hull. He descended to a lifeless area of the planet. The land bore the glassy look of soil fused by nuclear fire. Nothing, not even Zerg, lived on this island. He wasn’t here for Zerg, he’d had enough of the vile creatures. He wasn’t here for Terrans or Protoss. He was here for the one thing that survived in this harsh landscape. The massive, imposing form of a Xel’naga temple.
The temple was of the same design as the one on Shakuras, and it had served some unknown grand role in the Xel’naga’s forced evolution of the Protoss. As soon as Conrad left the dropship, he felt the throbbing psionic energy of the temple. He looked up at the graceful structure, itself looking much like a massive Protoss Nexus. This is it, he thought, no turning back now. He began his trek towards the temple.
***
It was a proud day in John and Michelle Conrad’s life together. Their first son had been born. In the old tradition, they named him John. Michelle immediately tagged him Johnny. They lived in absolute bliss for eight months with their new son. But it was to end one day.
Three armed Confederate soldiers knocked on their door that day. John answered, and asked, “Can I help you?”
“We need to come in, Mr. Conrad.” The lead soldier said.
“Very well, gentlemen,” John said, “But you must understand, I’d rather you leave your guns outside. I have a young child in the house.”
He was interrupted when one of the soldiers shoved a rifle in his mouth, and directed him out of their way. “Where is you son?” they asked.
One of the three found Johnny sleeping in his crib. The lead officer handed his weapon to one of his followers, and picked up Johnny, who began to cry uncontrollably. Michelle came into the room, saying, “John, what the hell is going on in here?”
Her husband stepped towards one of the armed men, raised his fist, and punched him in the face. He was a large man, and very strong. The blow splintered the jaw of the soldier. The other soldier fired at John. No man, no matter how strong, could survive a bullet to the brain.
***
Conrad came to his senses with a start. Was that my father? he asked himself. He had never been prone to hallucinations, and had never had such a vision before. But he knew, instinctively it was his father.
Tentatively, Conrad stepped over the threshold and into the temple.
***
The tag identified the baby as C.19-38M. But Sarah, or rather, K.19-29F, knew him as Johnny. He had just been brought in that day, and had been drugged to stop his wailing. Sarah could remember the day she had been brought to the labs. It was common for ghosts to have eidetic memory, and many could recall their early childhood with great clarity. But, try as she might, she could not recall anything before that day, twelve years ago, when she had woken up in the sterile metal confines of Research Ward 19. The drugged sleep that kicked off a ghost’s career did a lot to kill their previous memories.
Years later, Johnny’s first memories would be waking up, with Sarah looking down at him, whispering, “Never forget your parents, Johnny. I can’t remember mine. That’s how they want it. Don’t forget them, and don’t ever blame them, Johnny. They didn’t send you here.”
Conrad staggered. Despite his photographic memory, the earliest memories he could recall were those of the day Sarah had been left to the Zerg at New Gettysburg. All previous memories had been long suppressed. Not even the most painstaking Protoss memory probes were able to unwrap the memories.
But now, his entire life came back to him in a swirling maelstrom of images and sounds, sparked by the power of the Xel’naga temple.
He had been raised in a place called the Confederate Psionic Research Ward Nineteen. His “name” in the ward, how the scientists and guards addressed him, was C.19-38M. It struck him as a cold, but highly efficient method of identification. The name, embroidered on every piece of clothing he owned, gave his last initial, the ward to which he was assigned, his serial number in that ward, and his gender. These were the only vital statistics anybody there cared about.
Except one person.
Sarah.
Sarah Kerrigan was brought to the ward twelve years before him. When he was brought into the ward, she took pity on him. She had grown up fairly maladjusted. This was normal among ghosts, they never had the parental figures needed for normal development. Sarah became a surrogate mother to Johnny. She took over most of the so-called “care giving” that was normally handled by the rough guards.
She hoped this boy could grow up and lead a normal life. Nearly as much as she hoped she herself could one day enter a normal life.
She never anticipated how their separate destinies would place them at opposite extremes of the bloodiest conflict in the history of Mankind.
All of Sarah’s efforts, all of the time she spent with Johnny, and he still appeared to be headed towards the hellish life that she had lived.
When he was four, as was normal in the training process, Johnny was entered into a desensitization program. His daily entertainment under this program was a live daily show, in which a pack of feral Choupon, a six-legged monkey like creature, native to Tarsonis, and loved as a pet, slaughtered various defenseless animals.
Sarah knew she could never shield the boy from this. She also knew the price of him trying to shield himself from it. She constantly encouraged him to always watch. “Just stare forward, and keep your eyes open. Just do like everyone tells you, and you’ll be ok,” she’d say.
After only a few days in the desensitization program, Johnny refused to watch. He clamped his eyes shut, and refused to look at the gruesome scenes unfolding before him. Sarah had never told him the consequences of such actions. A burly guard gave him a savage beating.
As Johnny lay in the Ward that night, Sarah whispered to him, “Why didn’t you listen to me?” She didn’t expect a reply. Johnny’s jaw was wired shut, and he was in a deep drug-induced coma. She touched his forehead, and said to him, “Please listen to me from now on. It only gets worse.”
Conrad now entered the tall central shaft of the Temple. Above him, a mile high chasm opened onto the smoky skies of Aiur, and a great hovering khaydarin crystal suspended high over the temple. Before him was an intricately formed platform. He swallowed hard, and stepped onto the platform. Every surface seemed metallic, and gleamed in the swirling lights filling the shaft, but they were soft, yielding under his touch, like plastic or rubber.
He had been inside the Xel’naga temple on Shakuras. It, too, had such a floating platform, but that one held a strange psionic device for channeling the powers of the Khalis and Uraj crystals. This one had a waist-high ring in its place. The ring was encrusted with a myriad of colored crystals.
He was the first being to set foot in this room for a millenium. When he, and the other students at the Citadel were taken to the temple on Shakuras, Jazin had told them how there was a similar temple on Aiur, but the Judicator had forbade anyone from entering it over a thousand years before.
Conrad knew the Judicator’s designs. They blocked the Templar and the Khalai from gaining any knowledge that may give them power great enough to overthrow the Conclave.
But now, the Conclave was dead. Nothing, save the mindless Zerg and the hostile wastelands prevented anyone from entering and unlocking these secrets.
Saved! John had spent eleven years living in the Ward. Now, at long last, he was free!
The very man he had been taught to hate, Arcturus Mengsk, had attacked the labs. He, and the other few ghosts in his ward, spent hours hiding in the dark recesses of the ward, hoping they were not on the list of those to be killed by the Korhal attackers.
But they weren’t. Their mission was to liberate the ghost trainees housed in the facility. Twelve years of living on the threshold of Hell itself, and John, Sarah, and the dozen or so others in Ward Nineteen were free. But freedom would come at a cost.
As the Korhal soldiers pushed them towards the door, one of the ghosts pulled a gun. John knew this young man well. He was a Confederate loyalist. John couldn’t imagine how the boy got his hands on a pistol, but he had no time to muse on the subject.
Without a word, the young man fired three shots at those who had only hours earlier been his only friends. John saw two of his friends fall, but none of it really registered with him. It was as if he were a passive observer, not involved in the events. He watched with detached curiosity as the Korhal marines killed the attacker.
Some minutes later, John’s senses snapped back to him. Something he had seen… or not really seen, had his attention.
His eyes locked on the body of a large man, huddled against a doorjam, hiding. He felt Sarah’s hand on his shoulder, “Come on, Johnny, he’s dead. There’s nothing we can do about him.”
“No…” John said. “He isn’t dead.” Only after he uttered the words did he think to himself, How do I know he’s not dead?
He took a step into the room, and he saw that the man was the same one who had administered one of the more savage beatings he had received, months ago. His face was bruised, and blood had clotted under his nose and mouth. “How does it feel?” John asked him.
The man raised his huge head, and sneered at John. “Why don’t you kill me?” he said, “That’s what I taught you, wasn’t it?”
In a rage, John knelt down, grabbed the man’s hair, and snapped his head back. He was young, and lightly built, but the larger man was so severely injured, he could offer no resistance. He gave John a smile. “That’s right, boy. Kill me. That’s what you were made for.”
Sarah had entered behind him, and was shaking her head at him. “Johnny, please,” she pleaded.
But John was beyond reason. He felt the adrenaline surging into his blood. He felt nothing save the most primal blood lust it was possible for a human to feel. Slowly, very deliberately, he raised his fist. His breath became a ragged growl in his throat. He hesitated. This is my destiny, he thought, this is why I was made!
He swung his fist, and connected with the hated man’s throat.
Sarah’s jaw dropped in horror, and she staggered in disbelief. She had thought, she had known, that Johnny would never succumb to such feelings. She took Johnny by the hand, and led him away.
John knew he could never forget that day. The horrible feeling of not being the one controlling your own actions… to watch yourself kill, for revenge… for the sake of killing. The gurgling of his abuser, as he slowly choked on his own blood.
Conrad’s senses returned to him with a violent snap. He was mildly amused to note that, in his mind’s absence, his body had ridden the hovering platform to the peak of the temple. The confusing rush of memories had finally ceased, leaving Conrad in an odd state of disappointment. He wanted to learn more.
But he had learned all he would. He surveyed the land below him. From his godlike perspective, he could see the huge sweeping lines of the temple covering half of the small island. Beyond the blackened glassy earth was a vast, muddy sea, marred only by the crimson splashes of plankton blooms. Amazing, he thought. Even on this bleak world, life still finds its way.
Turning from the landscape, Conrad faced the center of the platform. There stood a circular enclosure, perhaps a meter across. Hook shaped crystal shards extended from the railing inward like glistening teeth.
Approaching the ring, he hesitated. Taking one last look around the hell that remained of Aiur, he wondered if the last ten years since his escape from Ward Nineteen were some horrible dream. Perhaps he was just quietly going mad in the dark recesses of some Confederate laboratory. Maybe the Zerg and the Protoss never existed, and Sarah was still human, maybe even right here, watching him, trapped in his nightmare. Such thoughts were childish, he knew. Nothing could make the years go away.
At any rate, he was here, now. This was one nightmare he planned to be in control of. Something deep in him told him this temple held the secrets he needed…
Slowly, mustering his courage, he stepped into the ring.
More images… This time they weren’t Conrad’s. They were of three strange, etherial beings, huddled around an immense Khaydarin crystal. Could these be the Xel’Naga? The images shifted.
Now, he saw a primitive tent village. The area bustled with the activity of several dozen short, stocky, and distinctively humanoid creatures. The had the mottled skin and design of Protoss… But these were different. They had slits for mouths, and their eyes lacked the powerful psionic glow.
The images shifted again, and again. With each shift, the village became more advanced, and the creatures changed dramatically. They increased in size, beyond the size of modern Protoss, and lost their mouth. Their eyes took on the powerful glow.
All the while, Conrad was aware of a deeper message, almost subliminal. It was slowly being absorbed into him mind… He didn’t under stand this message, but that would soon pass.
As the Protoss took on their modern form, a new image brought an immense and ancient ship, descending on the village, now a massive city. The Xel’Naga ship bridged the horizons, and blocked Aiur’s hot blue-white sun. As images swirled and blurred upon each other, Conrad witnessed the brief union of the Xel’Naga and their creations. The temple on which he stood was erected over that early city. The images ended, with the enigmatic Xel’Naga, hidden in their brown shrouds, standing on the precipice of the temple, looking down at the Protoss who had built it.
The images vanished. Conrad knew why. The Xel’Naga did not remain on Aiur for long. The Protoss turned on them, probably some time after the completion of their many temples dotting the landscape. From there, Aiur would burn under civil war for a million years. The Protoss swore to themselves that the Homeworld would never be brought to the state of ruin it saw at the peak of the Aeon of Strife. Conrad was somehow saddened that nothing remained but a burning wasteland now.
But none of this would matter. All that had passed would mean nothing, ever again.
For deep in those visions, ingrained in the very essence of the temple, was a message, left by the ancients. Fate had revealed it to Conrad, and it was his duty to use it… The secret of the Xel’Naga.
