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The Terran Ascension: Origins
>>Go to Page 2.
The wind blew across the barren wasteland of planet 32987BX. That's what the Dominion survey team had tentatively labeled the rock, anyway. Lately, renegade Terran militias had headed for every newly discovered planet they could get their hands on. Ever since Kerrigan had established herself as ruler of the Koprulu Sector, all Terran organizations had been making a mad dash to discover new planets outside of her bounds for colonization and resources. Most sat back and waited for the Dominion to make its press release on the broad band channel and
then set off after the coordinates, trying to beat any other pirates, as well as the Dominion, weak as it may be. Unfortunately, this particular expedition had been fruitless to the extreme.
"I wish the damned Dominion released more than coordinates and a name on these planets, maybe then we wouldn't have wasted so much time on it!" complained one of the men.
Nevertheless, the rag-tag group was determined to find SOMETHING redeemable on the hellish desert world.
"Sir, I'm picking up some weird energy fluctuations about two miles east from here."
"Odd, we didn't notice anything on the way down. Probably an electrical storm."
"Perhaps, but I advise we seek it out anyway."
Damn freelance scientists were as pushy as any of their Dominion counterparts.
"Sure, lead the way..."
The group trudged through the ankle deep sand drifts for what seemed for hours. By now, sand had penetrated even the inner folds of their desert garb.
Suddenly, their scientist came to a stop.
"Well, I'll be damned.."
"What?? What do ya see--well I'll be..."
Through the swirling sandstorm, a structure loomed, set into the side of a huge rock outcropping. It was almost pyramidal, like a temple of sorts.
The ragged group made haste to the building and walked into its cave-like opening, eager to get out of the storm. Half of an ancient, rusted door lay on the ground next to the entry. It was covered in alien inscriptions.
"Hmmm..ain't Protoss..." one man observed.
The band moved inward until they felt they were sufficiently secure from the outside elements. It was very dark, so they lit their flares.
"Wow, this is quite a place," another pirate said as he scanned the room they were in.
Eerie shadows were cast by the complex geometrical shapes that made up the architecture of the building. It was apparent that the structure had at one time been a very prestigious and glamourous place. All walls were covered in insciptions, and with a little polishing, they were made to shine as they did ages ago. Heaps of dust and sand were piled in the corners of the chamber. The men were too exhausted to explore further.
"Everyone get some rest, and tomarrow morning we'll search the place, and if we don't find anything, we'll rendevous with the shuttle in the evening."
The next morning, all woke up rested and refreshed. All was silent; the violent storm had passed.
Slivers of light seeped through cracks and gave some illumination to the interior. After a short breakfast, the leader warned his men not to waste all their water, and sent them to explore.
"Damn." JoBob Hepburn mumbled. There were so many corridors to take it was hard to choose one.
Hepburn flipped a small coin he always carried with him; an ancient currency from Earth. It landed heads.
"Left it is, then," and he walked into the darkness.
Hours passed, with nothing eventful happening because of the fact that all of the panels that appeared to be doors were unmovable. Mr. Hepburn was getting tired. He was going nowhere, and he didn't know how deep this hallway went into the mountain. Hepburn walked on and turned a corner. There, at the end of the hall, was another door.
"Another dead-end," he muttered.
Despite his better judgement, Hepburn walked up to the door and tried to open it. He pulled and he pushed. The door had no handle, so he tried bracing himself against the opposite wall. Nothing. Just when he was about to give up, he noticed a vaguely familiar symbol etched on the door surface. He peered closer. It was unmistakable. It was a biohazard sign. It wasn't THAT much of a shock. The Protoss had a similar image for hazardous material labeling.
"Must be one of those universal constants," Hepburn said under his breath.
With his new discovery driving him, Hepburn looked around quickly and scanned the walls. Yes, there it was. The same symbol, but smaller, was etched on the wall a few yards down the hall.
He pushed it. Nothing. Frustrated, he whipped out his modified mini-torch and fired at it. The emblem began to glow red. Before the symbol got so hot as to appear to melt right off the wall, Hepburn heard a click, then a pause, then a distinct "whoosh" noise. He looked in the direction of the door. Yes, it was now open. The whooshing indicated that it led to an air tight room, and its opening had let new air into the ancient room. Cautiously, Hepburn stepped through the door and sniffed the stale air. Yep, VERY old. He then scanned the room.
"My God...." he gasped, nearly breathlessly.
Before him was a vast open chamber, with a domed ceiling and huge columns radiating from the center of the room. In the center was a giant computer. Yes, a computer, or at least, it was the closest thing Hepburn could identify it to. It was a column much like the others, but bigger in diameter and covered in blinking lights and what appeared to be crystalline screens displaying 3D images of an alien language. Apparently, this place had batteries better than Energizer (R). He strode across the empty marble(or was it? He couldn't tell.) floor. His boots thudded loudly on the hard surface and echoed throughout the chamber. When he reached the 'central computer', he knew this belonged to race he had never encountered before. The symbols were ENTIRELY alien, not resembling even the little amount of Protoss he knew. Not knowing what to do next, he turned and leaned up against the huge machine.
He sighed.
And then he nearly pissed his pants.
An agonizing grating sound was coming from across the other side of the arena. It was evidently triggered by a 'button' he had leaned on. Curious and scared at the same time, he sought out the source of the noise.
He tracked it to a small alcove carved into the curved wall of the dome. He walked into the small area and held his flare up to the shadows. In the back of the alcove, surrounded by etchings, was a symbol. A symbol of...a Terran.
It was an unmistakable likeness, and it was far from primitive. Quite detailed actually. He looked around again, letting himself be shocked by how the place could look so ancient, yet be built by what was apparently a technologically superior race. He turned his attention back to the engraving. He had a small theory spinning in his mind by now, and if he was right, there would be alcoves in the chamber containing engravings of Protoss, Zerg, and other myraid of races as well.
'A library? A catalogue of races?' he pondered this a moment.
Hepburn wasn't the most educated of people. He was raised as a smuggler, and never really attended "school". He was no dummy, though. There were greater powers at work here. He stood up to leave, but hesitated.
"Awww, it couldn't hurt," he decided.
Hepburn turned back and took out his mini-torch. Evidently this technology worked on energy activation. He flashed the torch at the engraving. As expected, it glowed red, and then, at its peak brightness, it stopped.
A groaning came from behind the engraving. He put away the torch and stepped back. Slowly, the human form split into wedge-shaped panels and slid back into the wall, leaving a circular hole. A gleaming, metallic arm extended from the hole.
Startled, Hepburn jumped back and crouched. The arm extended and came to a rest. On the arm was a pyramidal container. Again overwhelmed by curiosity, Hepburn crept toward the object. It had a small button on it. One button.
"What the hell," he shrugged and pressed the button.
The container opened like a flower bud unfolding its petals, and then retracted into the base. There, resting, or better put, hovering, on the base was a shimmering blue crystal surrounded by what looked like golden nano-machinery. He touched what looked like another button, which promptly stuck out a spike and pricked him upon contact.
"Ow! Son of a--"
He stared at the button and spike, which now contained a splotch of his blood. The spike retracted into the golden "piping" surrounding the crystal and a whirring noise started. A holographic image of human DNA appeared WITHIN the crystal and began spinning. Sections of it turned red and flashed, and it appeared as if an analysis of the DNA was taking place, but he couldn't be sure. Suddenly, the image disappeared, and the metal arm quickly snapped back into its hole. The engraving slid back over the opening.
Hepburn stood in disappointed silence for seconds. Then, as if the planet decided to awaken from its dormant state, the entire chamber shook.
"EARTHQUAKE!" he shouted and ran towards the entrance to the chamber which closed behind him. He was thrown against the side of the hallway as another large quake shook the installation. He gathered himself and kept going. Some of the crumbling ceiling began to flake off, creating a dust that made it hard to see.
Hepburn kept running until he came to their camping spot in the "lobby". No one was there.
The leader of the Renegades of Apollo thought he had seen everything. He was wrong. He and the rest of the group, who had returned hours ago from their search, had run outside at the first trembling of the structure, not wanting an ancient building to crush them inside. Once outside, it was realized that the quake was coming from the BUILDING. The leader and his men stood speechless as the top of the exposed pyramid retracted and slid back into itself. A huge crystal, bigger than any THEY had ever seen, came rumbling up from the depths of the structure.
Once it stopped ascending, it began trembling itself, and then something very odd occurred.
The crystal seemed to begin pulsing, as if a huge power source was being fed into it. The pulsing became faster and faster, and as it pulsed, it began glowing intensely. Arcs of electricity reached up from the gleaming gold of the crystal's holder and hit the crystal. The shining crystal seemed to absorb this energy. The crackling of the electricity dancing around and on the crystal object and the humming of energy made it known that something very important was about to happen. No one could fathom what. Then, as if someone was blowing out a match, everything stopped.
Seconds passed, and then a giant beam of energy shot up from the crystal, going faster than the speed of sound, creating a loud boom that shook the ground. The swirling, blue and purple beam shot up into the sky reaching higher and higher. A shockwave blasted the men off their feet and into the rough sand.
As they looked up through the dust, the beam seemed to hit an invisible target in the atmosphere and it detonated. An explosion of unparalleled proportions spread across the sky, releasing untold amounts of energy. A shockwave of swirling energy blazed across the sky and stretched in all directions. It passed the horizon and was gone.
On the other side of the planet, Samuel Kynes looked up from tuning a hydrolytic converter to see a strange thing in the distance. A rolling, twisting disturbance was churning in the sky in what was otherwise a cloudless day. Sensing something amiss, he started to walk towards his plast-mold home only to spot a wall of energy coming straight towards him, from the direction of the odd distrubance. Dropping his tools in the sand, Kynes took off running towards the main cluster of buildings in the desert colony, flipping up his protective visor and shouting at the top of his lungs, "EVERYONE INSIDE! HURRY, THERE'S A STORM COMING!"
Hurriedly, people scattered from the main street and into their homes, locking and latching doors and windows once inside. To the sole inhabitants of this harsh world, storms were a common thing, but Samuel Kynes knew that what he had seen was no ordinary storm.
Thousands of kilometers away a remote monitoring station picked up a large blip on their instruments. They marked it as an UNUSUALLY large star going supernova, and thought nothing of it. In the next 76 hours, a twisting wave of invisible psionic energy blasted through the Koprulu Sector encompassing all planets and all of space. Those who felt it experienced a twinge and tingling, but most attributed it to static in the air and moved on.
Most Protoss detected the psionic anomaly, but because they were more concentrated on other manners, specifically the survival of their race, they ignored the phenomenon.
Only the Zerg took the most notice of the psionic wave, but Kerrigan was the only one to detect it, and she was too busy controlling her empire and pondering what the OTHER psionic distrbance she felt was. She dismissed it as well.
No one realized that this unseen force that was passing through the universe would initiate an event that would change the course of human evolution FOREVER.
This is....The Terran Ascension.
>>Go to Page 2.
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