With the room now private to themselves, Jean and Delta were free to speak. They no longer needed to bother with politeness or art of the words. They could be as efficient as possible.

“What is it?” Delta asked. She and Jean had the same conscious and mostly the same memories, but they had no way of communicating with each other through some sort of web or net. Jean refused to connect herself with the Purifier data web because systems could potentially be hacked. Maybe it was safe now, in this universe, but something like this would leave flaws that could hardly be removed. Jean could risk losing Delta and the Purifier legions to a hacker in the future because she could always put them into her watch and shield them from any outside effect. She didn’t want to make herself vulnerable as well.

That was why the two had to communicate with words, which was relatively ineffective.

“Nyon contacted me. He has established an alliance with Alarak and Ji’nara, but he is growing restless. He wants to advance in his society.”

“He doesn’t have enough forces. His ruthlessness will get him killed. He is too valuable to lose.”

“We can turn this situation around.” Jean replied coldly. Her face was blank. “Bring the Cybros with you and contact Nyon. Find a way to take down his enemies. We need him to rise to the rank of Highlord when Amon returns. Do it quietly. The Tal’darim will never accept someone who allied with the enemy to be the Highlord, especially when that person doesn’t have absolute control over his people.” In the original history, Alarak used Artanis’ Daelaam forces and took down Ma’lash, but he only got away with it because he was the highest ranking Tal’darim alive. If Nyon did that, then Ma’lash and Nuroka wouldn’t hesitate to take him down in the name of heresy.

“Affirmative. I am also sending out individual warp prisms with probes in them. They will locate resource rich, undiscovered planets and warp in bases there. These mining planets will produce a substantial amount of income.“

“Turn the resources to Warden and Purifier units at a rate that you see fit.” Jean added.

“What is the situation of the battle station?”

“I checked out the research data in the Dominion system. It appears like the Moebius are still relatively incomplete in terms of their hybrid research. A couple specimens have been created, but they are feral. They have been contained and stored aboard the Cybros.”

Delta went through the memory she received from Jean. “That’s odd. Zeratul should have met and fought hybrids when he looked for the preservers of Zhakul, which is around now. The hybrid technology should be fully developed already.”

“It is possible that Narud hasn’t shown his full research to Mengsk. The Skygeirr Station is a Dominion facility. Narud wants Mengsk to give him funding, but if Mengsk thinks the research is done, he might stop that funding. Plus, if the research is done, Mengsk will no longer need Narud. He will likely be terminated to keep the hybrids a secret.”

“Reasonable. Anything else?”

“We have acquired a substantial number of resources from this battle. 12 battlecruisers are relatively intact. I will modify them to Warden units. I have gained control to the Skygeirr battle station itself. I will warp it away and use it as a staging point. The rest of the ships and wreckages will be scrapped down for minerals. Calculate how long it will take.”

Delta’s mechanical mind turned. ”At least three days.”

“Then we will stay here for three days. When all the modifications are complete, you take the Purifiers and half the minerals and go to Slayn. I take the Wardens and the rest of the minerals and Stokov and go to Umoja. Maintain contact.”

“Affirmative.” Delta remembered something. “I captured the Moebius director here. A woman by the name of Amanda. What should we do with her?”

“I have an idea…”

Three days went by. When Jean was busy amplifying her power, the rest of the sector fell deeper into chaos.

The Queen of Blades suddenly launched a large scale assault on Dominion territories. The Dominion fleet was powerful, but they were scattered and positioned to defend the Dominion against multiple threats. This made them vulnerable to the concentrated strikes of the Swarm. Fleet after fleet was taken by surprise, surrounded, and destroyed. The Swarm adopted a lightning warfare tactic as it cut into the Dominion territory, destroying and infesting everything in its way.

Someone passionate, like Raynor or Valerian Mengsk, would try to assemble all the ships and meet the Swarm head on, but not Arcturus Mengsk. The Emperor smirked upon the idea of giving up his loyal forces to protect the common people. He pulled all his fleet to the core worlds, a series of planets that held the majority of the industries and resources of the Dominion. As for the outer planets, mining and agricultural planets like Agria, well, maybe the zerg would happen to miss them?

Unfortunately, not all the planets were expendable. The planet where the Moebius HQ was on, Tyrador VIII, for example, was one of such planets. Strangely, whether on purpose or by accident, Mengsk pulled the five fleets positioned around that planet back as well. Why he did that was anyone’s guess, but the most reasonable explanation would be that the emperor wanted to weaken the influence of Narud by making him homeless.

Mengsk thought Narud would just take the beating and move to another Moebius facility. The loss of a single planet was acceptable. Before he ordered the retreat, Mengsk made sure Narud wasn’t on Tyrador VIII. The Moebius Foundation would be beaten down, but it wouldn’t take substantial damage.

Unfortunately, Narud couldn’t just move on. One of his missions here in the material world was to take Kerrigan’s essence away from her and use it to forge a body for Amon, and to do that he needed the Xel’naga Keystone. Not only so, he needed Raynor to get them so he could eventually use it against Kerrigan. Narud had all the coordinates to the Tal’darim planets that held these fragments, but all of these coordinates were stored in the data cores of Tyrador VIII. Even the xel’naga didn’t expect the backstab from Mengsk. As far as his god like mind could see, Tyrador VIII was a safe place.

The backstab caught Emil Narud by complete surprise. If Kerrigan could get into the data cores and locate the coordinates of the artifact fragments, she could easily seize those Tal’darim worlds and take them for herself. Without the artifact, he would never have the opportunity to collect Kerrigan’s essence. The Swarm could overwhelm anything and everything, including a lonely xel’naga with a handful of hybrids.

Narud acted swiftly, using the influence of his current identity to its maximum power. The Moebius Foundation washed over the mercenary market, hiring every gun for hire they could find and shipping them to the besieged planet. Narud even went as far as contacting Raynor’s Raiders, risking exposing his relation to this infamous rebel group to Arcturus Mengsk just to make sure Kerrigan couldn’t get what she wanted.

Among the summoned mercenaries was a certain blonde spectre by the name of Viper.

But as the terran were busy fighting off the zerg, Jean was doing something rather cruel to her prisoner.

Amanda opened her eyes. Her head felt so heavy.

She silently touched her forehead and glanced around.

Suddenly, a man walked in.

“Sir, Doctor Narud has arrived.”

Amanda frowned slightly. She didn’t know why, but she felt so strange. But why did she feel strange? She groaned and touched her temple and remembered Doctor Emil Narud was visiting the Skygeirr Station today. He would examine her work on the hybrids. She had spent weeks preparing for this.

How could she forget?

Amanda stood up and straightened her uniform and walked out of the room. The next moment, she was back in the room.

A second has passed, but it felt like hours to Amanda. Inside her mind, she has already welcomed Narud into the facility, showed him her work, and received further instructions on the research.

She could vividly remember Narud telling her to change her focus from developing hybrids to developing weapons against hybrids instead. She didn’t know why, but for some reason she didn’t bother asking.

She tapped her chin. She needed to start working.

The next second she was inside her lab. She was in her white lab uniform, and she had a hybrid reaver in front of her, restrained and ready to be experimented on.

Amanda frowned briefly. A hint of confusion appeared inside her brain, but that confusion immediately faded away. Now with her mind cleared, she started focusing on the hybrid in front of her…

Delta was watching the entire process unfold.

The hybrids would eventually become one of Amon’s strongest servants. Jean could try her best to destroy hybrid factories and cut down the hybrid count as much as possible, but Narud was literally a god. There was no telling how many resources he has accumulated during the centuries he spent in the material world. As far as Jean knew there might be dozens of factories around the sector, continuously pumping out hybrids of all types. There was no way she could take all of them out in time.

She needed an effective way to take these hybrids down, but the problem with machines was that they lacked innovation. AIs could only do what they were programmed to do. Delta and Jean were clever, but they were more focused on computer science than anything else. Engineering and weapon development were quite a distance away from hacking. Jean could learn, but it would take time, and time was something Jean didn’t have.

Thankfully, Jean had the perfect scientist. Doctor Amanda has worked on the hybrids for years. She knew a lot about them, and this information could be used to develop a way to take these hybrids down.

Unfortunately, the doctor made it quite clear to Delta that she wouldn’t serve an alien master when Delta first talked to her. Most human beings weren’t willing to work for aliens, but for some reason this one was especially stubborn.

Delta didn’t let that stop her.

After downloading Amanda’s mind and killing her to tie up loose ends, Delta sent Amanda’s conscious into a program on the Purifier data web. The program, recently coded by Jean, was able to fool Amanda and make her subconsciously think she was still with the Moebius, therefore making her work with all her heart. Posing as people like Narud with administrative access to the program, Delta was able to turn her area of research from building and strengthening hybrids to weakening and killing them.

The hybrids inside the stimulation were constructed based on Amanda’s memories and Jean’s knowledge, as well as the research data collected from the battle station. Everything else was made to be as real as possible as well.

Delta made Amanda her slave and the doctor didn’t even realize it. She thought she was still fighting for humanity.

Three days later, all the scraps were turned to minerals. The Cybros and the Warden battlecruisers worked at full efficiency. Probes assembled all sorts of Purifier units, from the most basic sentinel and instigators to the most advanced carrier, while Warden SCVs constructed Warden marines and marauders and even vikings and battlecruisers.

One of the advantages of an army of machines was their ability to be produced in mass numbers. As long as the resources were in place, they were endless.

Nearly one thousand legionnaires fell in the battle for the station. At the end of the day, they were replaced by three thousand more, fresh off the assembly line and ready to fight.

Two Purifier carriers were assembled. Tens of thousands of probes worked 24/7 for three whole days and created these several kilometers long weapons of mass destruction. 200 mirages and 50 scouts were produced.

On the other side, all 12 Dominion battlecruisers have been modified into their Warden counterparts. Since it was a modification, they were much cheaper in terms of resources than building a brand new ship. This was extremely efficient compared to spending the minerals on a brand new carrier or battlecruiser.

The Skygeirr station was mostly rebuilt. A Warden Command AI was loaded into its system. A group of Warden SCVs was left on the station. Their job was to repair the orbital defenses so the station at least had some way of defending itself.

The station was sent to a planet where the Purifier expansion parties Delta sent out three days ago have located a mineral rich planet. The station would be turned to a movable manufacturing facility and continuously turn the minerals on the planet to combat units.

As all was said and done, the Warden fleet and the Purifier fleet parted toward two distinctively different destinations.