“Sixth Ascendant, I pledge my life for you. I pray you will lead me and my warriors to victory in the name of Amon.”

Nyon watched as one of the lower ascendants kneeled down in front of him. The warrior wasn’t joining to be his supplicant. Instead, he was joining his fleet. This way they could work together in the conquest of other factions.

“Very well. You will not regret this decision.”

After the Rak’Shir, Nyon’s reputation returned to his previous state, if not more. The sudden turn from a shameful defeat to a crushing victory shook the mind of many of the audience. The way Nyon slaughtered Shalek with absolute ease made even the best ascendants re-evaluate the Sixth Ascendant.

Suddenly, Nyon felt a wave of psionic energy. He waved his hand to dismiss the warrior in front of him. After the ascendant retreated, he took out a communication device.

“Jean.” He did his standard mocking voice. As much as he adored the girl, he did his best to keep it hidden. If Jean knew how important she was to him, she would know she had leverage and would likely ask for more from him. He didn’t want to do that if he didn’t have to.

“Nyon. Judging from your current state I believe my plan worked.”

“Indeed. However, your situation doesn’t seem to be as good as mine.” Nyon eyed Jean from top to bottom. ”My warriors told me you are captured by a hostile faction of your kind. Are you asking for my assistance?”

“No.” To Nyon’s surprise, Jean shook her head. “That said terran faction is not a threat. I want something else. What do you know about Glacius?”

Nyon’s eyes slightly widened. “What is it?”

“Glacius is the home to a research facility where the Daelaam are developing ancient Purifier technology. I want you to locate it and seize it for me.”

“Purifier? The Tal’darim have no need for these mechanical protoss. Why should I do that? If it’s a Daelaam research facility, then there must be heavy defenses around the planet. It will be a costly attack.”

While the common Tal’darim frowned upon the strength of the Daelaam, the higher ranking ascendants were more than aware of the power of the Golden Armada. Under the light of the Khala, the Daelaam had both the skill and the determination to fight any enemy to the death. Its Golden Armada could threaten the best of the Death Fleet.

Nyon had no intention of pissing them off without a proper reason. Attacking distant outposts was one thing. Attacking a heavily defended research facility was another.

“Perhaps, but it will also make you more powerful. If you takes down a heavily guarded Daelaam position while even Ma’lash is stuck taking down outposts and capturing small groups of Daelaam, well, perhaps your people will think you are more suited to lead them.”

It was tempting, but Nyon wasn’t stupid.

“The opinion of the people means nothing to us. If I take too much losses in the battle, I will be challenged.”

“Well, in that case,” Jean tried a different approach. “How about the weapons and ships in that facility? If we operate well enough, we can seize the fleet securing the facility and get out with the purifier technology before Daelaam reinforcement arrive. You get more ships. I get the Purifier technology.”

Nyon tapped his chin.

“Deal.”

It didn’t take long for Nyon to locate the coordinates of Glacius. After three captured Daelaam outposts, the Tal’darim finally found out everything they needed to know about Glacius to launch an invasion. The Daelaam kept the coordinates of that planet a secret to outsiders, but due to the Khala everyone knew what everyone else was thinking. Daelaam zealots would die before giving the Tal’darim any information. Unfortunately, willpower could only do so much against the overwhelming psionic power of the ascendants.

Nyon immediately brought his fleet over.

After defeating Shalek and taking all his ships for himself, Nyon continuously received the loyalty of new ascendants. Each of them had their own ships and warriors. All of these placed the Sixth Ascendant’s ship count at 92.

90 carriers and 2 mothership.

It was a force to be reckoned with. Fifth Ascendant Ji’nara had around 100 ships. While the amount of ships wasn’t directly related to the supplicants of the ascendant, it did make things easier for the ascendants to build forces solely loyal to themselves.

The entire Death Fleet contained roughly one thousand capital ships, including dozens of motherships. Nyon had one tenth of the Death Fleet under his command, and now he was unleashing it on the Glacius facility.

In contrast, the ship count for the Golden Armada was around 1200, but they had a large territory to guard, and the Daelaam had many enemies. Only a very small fraction of that was positioned on Glacius.

Two Daelaam fleets were on Glacius, but they were insufficient.

Nyon didn’t have the problem the Daelaam had. He had several planets, but this was meant to be a lightning war. With any luck, when enemies, outside or not, receive information about the lack of defenses around those planets, Nyon would already be back with his forces, hopefully victorious.

“Rip them to pieces!” Nyon did his standard Tal’darim brute force tactic. As far as he could see, there was no need for tactics. But through the communication Jean stopped him.

“Wait. You needed more ships, right? Don’t you want these twenty four ships to add to your arsenal?”

Nyon frowned and lifted his hand, slightly delaying the attack. “I would gladly capture these ships, but the Daelaam are great fighters. They will die before surrendering. We can board their ships, but unlike your people, they will put up a fight. We don’t have much time to waste. The Golden Armada may arrive at any time. The most we can get is the ships inside the facility.”

“Then we take the fleets out before the reinforcement arrives. Last I checked, your Highlord has over 250 ships.” Jean tilted her head. “You will need to work very hard if you want to take his place.”

Nyon nodded slowly. If he wanted to ascend, he couldn’t afford to be cautious. “What’s the plan?”

Jean started speaking.

Half a minute later, the Tal’darim fleet swung into action. The Daelaam were outnumbered over four to one, but they still formed a defensive formation. Phoenixes and scouts, as well as interceptors, were flung out and formed a cloud of gold in front of the carriers. Out of the 24 ships, 12 were carriers. The rest were tempests. With purification beams, photon cannons, and plasma shields, carriers were slightly in front, covering the artillery units and allowing them to fire as many times as possible.

The Daelaam commander was experienced. Then again centuries of experience with war tend to make warriors experienced. Unfortunately, tactics only help when the two sides were of equal strength. In a situation like this, it would take a miracle to turn the tide.

The two Tal’darim motherships moved forward. Their khaydarin crystals blinked. The near unlimited power it held was tackled and used to crack the space and time of an area. In this case, the area was the piece of space the Daelaam fleet was in.

In a split moment, all twenty four Daelaam capital ships were put into stasis. In this state, the Daelaam were stuck in a situation where time simply didn’t flow. Not a single second passed inside the stasis field while the rest of the world moved on. They could neither attack nor be attacked. It was as if they were both in and out of this universe at the same time. They could be seen, but they couldn’t be touched.

Usually stasis technology, utilized by both the protoss and the terran, was used to preserve their warriors either because they were fatally wounded or because they needed to survive a long period of time without consuming much energy. Even in battle, it was used to cut the enemies to pieces so the protoss ships could fight one group of the enemies at one time. But this time it was used to freeze the entire enemy fleet.

This was possible, but it seemed pointless. The enemies could just exit stasis and be untouched.

But Jean had something else in mind.

All the Daelaam were frozen in space before they could do anything. Fighters stopped in the vacuum of space. Carriers froze. The flame at their thrusters looked like someone pressed the pause button on a video.

Fifty war prisms moved forward and positioned themselves as close to the Daelaam capital ships as possible. The stasis froze the ships themselves in space and time, but the Tal’darim computers calculated the area of effect so the war prisms could project their power fields onto the Daelaam ships without being stopped. All the Daelaam firepower were frozen in time. There was nothing keeping the war prisms back.

When the prisms were done, Nyon turned to the pilot of the mothership.

“Cut off the energy supply.”

“We are the soul of strength!” The mothership pilot said loudly as she psionically gave the vessel a command. Her voice was thrilled with excitement. She could already see the enemies burning. With that in mind, she turned to Nyon with admiration in her scarlet eyes.

The next second the two motherships cut off their energy output, and the effect of the stasis disappeared.

The Daelaam recovered immediately, but even with the khala it still took them a while to understand what happened.

That was already too late.

The Daelaam pilots immediately noticed the cloud of bright red prisms around them. All of them were in phasing mode. Previously the stasis prevented the warpings from happening, but now that the carriers and tempests were returned to normal...

Thousands of light beams came down from the war prisms and into the Daelaam vessels. When the figures solidified, they became zealots, slayers, ascendants, and blood hunters. A small group of Tal’darim adepts was mixed among the zealots, ready to use their glaive cannons with the element of surprise and mow down enemy zealots.

Daelaam forces responded. Zealots drew their blades and charged into the enemy several times their numbers. Dragoons didn’t hesitate because of the injuries of their pilots. These warriors, willing to be forever merged with metal armors to keep serving their people after being fatally wounded in battle, charged forward. Their metal limbs moved with astonishing speed. Once they were in position, their particle disruptors started firing.

Anti-armor particle disruptors were deadly to armored units. Two slayers were immediately blasted to pieces by a dozen dragoons. They didn’t have the social status to be equipped with phasing armor.

A high templar crushed a Tal’darim zealot. More came, and the warrior channeled her psionic energy and lashed them out at the enemy crowd all at once. A deadly psionic storm ripped through the halls of the ship and destroyed everything it covered. A dozen zealots screamed as their shields and their bodies were reduced to basic atoms.

But the odds were simply too great. When the Daelaam were in stasis and the war prisms were getting in position, Nyon moved his ships closer to the frozen Daelaam fighters. Tal’darim scouts and phoenixes were deployed. As soon as the fighters were out of stasis, Nyon ordered his forces to strike.

Red phoenixes and scouts gunned down their yellow counterparts, who were still wondering what the hell was going on.

Tal’darim carriers turned to their sides. On each capital ship, hundreds of photon cannons were warped onto its surface that was facing the Daelaam fighters. With a single command, all these cannons fired. In just two seconds, tens of thousands of photon projectiles washed over the interceptors.

Explosions covered the battlefield. Without plasma shields, the interceptors couldn’t withstand a single shot from the cannons. They moved around and tried to use their speed to dodge the shot, but that was when clouds of Tal’darim interceptors were thrown out.

Nyon wanted the tempests and carriers. He didn’t need a couple hundred fighters and replaceable interceptors.

The Daelaam fighters were wiped out with relative ease. As they died, the capital ships weren’t having it easy either.

Daelaam zealots and dragoons were reinforced by a couple immortals arrived. Their phase disruptors, much stronger than particle disruptors, took out slayers one by one and held the ground. A few slayers with phasing armors survived a few more shots, but in the end they weren’t enough. At one spot, half a dozen immortals formed a line and destroyed every Tal’darim that entered their firing range.

The line collapsed when ascendants and blood hunters entered the field. An immortal fired once more and turned another slayer into broken pieces of metal, but the next second its barrier was activated. On the other end of the hall, an ascendant groaned in frustration. He would’ve enjoyed seeing that Daelaam strider pop, but its barrier came online and prevented that unfortunate fate.

His groan was immediately turned to a smirk when the immortal was sliced apart by an invisible void blade. Blue nutrient solution washed over the floor as the wounded warrior returned to the Khala.

Zealots from both sides kept on reinforcing the field on both sides, but one side had an unfair advantage after the last high templar was ripped to shreds by a mind blast.

An ascendant threw out a psionic orb, and dozens of Daelaam zealots in the orb’s way were electrocuted. Their plasma shields protected them from a painful death, but the orb gave the Tal’darim zealots a critical advantage. When a Tal’darim zealot could kill a Daelaam one in three strikes and a Daelaam one needed twice that number of strikes to take down a Tal’darim zealot, it would be a very one sided fight, especially in a battle between warriors as experienced as the Tal’darim and the Daelaam.

All across the field, light beam after light beam was dropped down, bringing more and more Tal’darim into the battlefield. On the other hand, Daelaam warriors were pretty much extinct.

As the ground resistance fell, Tal’darim boarding parties started taking over the ships from the inside. A few pilots made a last stand and brought dozens of Tal’darim to their end, but they were quickly overwhelmed. Tal’darim ascendants walked past the broken armors and sat on the seats that just lost their owners.

A tempest was the first to fall. A second tempest was the next victim. The third casualty was a carrier. The Daelaam wanted to hold on until reinforcement came or die trying. At least they achieved the second part.

When the last carrier was riddled with red void energy, the Golden Armada was still nowhere in sight.