An hour later, the Tara’s mothership was the only Daelaam ship on the planet. All the other carriers warped away, except for one that got targeted by three destroyers and failed to escape in time.

“Zealot, is the facility evacuated?” Tara asked desperately. The tal’darim were boarding her mothership via a power field the tal’darim mothership created. The Daelaam ground forces fought back, but they couldn’t hold on if enemy reinforcements keep on arriving. If she wanted to keep her ship she would need to warp away and stop the tal’darim from warping in.

There was no response. “Zealot?” Tara suddenly realized she could no longer sense the protoss below in the facility. She had been too occupied by the battle to realize that sooner. For the Daelaam, separation from the Khala could mean two things. Either their nerve cords were being severed or they were dead. In either case this was not good.

On the facility below, the ghost forces revealed their form after the last zealot fell due to a psi powered bullet to the skull. The shooter decloaked and tapped something in her ear.

“This is Nova. The Megalith is secure. Awaiting further instructions.“

The blonde commander made it certain to Nova she was satisfied. “Good. Secure all the prizes you can find and hold your position.”

“How is the battle going on up there?” Nova asked curiously. Usually a field agent like her shouldn’t know about the general situation, but as someone close to Jean she had a chance to be curious.

“Everything is going according to the plan. The tal’darim Death Fleet is fighting the Daelaam defensive fleet. Both sides have suffered heavy losses, but the Daelaam are nearly defeated. The tal’darim are still in battle condition, but they are weakened. Now we have enough ships to push them back.”

“And the Highlord didn’t sense anything?”

“Like I suspected, a single terran ship successfully running away from the entire Death Fleet is...quite provoking. Ma’lash is controlled by anger, and anger makes him blind.” Jean said with a sense of curiosity. She had dealt with anger before she lost her emotions, but spending her entire time in the starcraft universe was enough to make her forget about what anger felt like.

“Indeed, emotions can mess up with people’s minds.” Nova agreed. “That’s why the Dominion put inhibitor chips in us. But then again emotions can also make us strong. Love, for example...”

“Now is not the time Nova.” Jean stopped her.

Tara understood something was off on the ground, but there was nothing she could do.

In the air the Daelaam warship was already being focus fired. The plasma shield, after withstanding countless hits, was finally penetrated. But Ma’lash didn’t order his ships to destroy the mothership. A mothership was precious even for the Highlord of the tal’darim. Instead, he ordered boarding parties to engage.

War prisms approached in the dozens. Each were loaded with a squad of tal’darim warriors. The remaining weapons of the mothership opened fire. Most of the purifier beams were down, but one of them lived. The beam swift toward the war prisms as effective as it could, but it was too few in numbers.

Three war prisms, along with the tal’darim inside, perished, but the others reached its target in time. They entered phasing mode, released their warriors within, and then started to warp in massive amount of tal’darim ground forces.

Hundreds of light beams shined on the mothership. Zealots and slayers solidified. They were met with the security forces on the mothership.

Psi blades clashed with psi blades. Both sides fought bravely and expertly, but the Daelaam were severely outnumbered. The blue were being outnumbered and overwhelmed. Some of them escaped by emergency warp system, but some of them fought till the last second.

As the battle went on, Tara was in her bridge. She looked at the tal’darim unit count with a smile.

“High templar, we can not hold!“ A zealot said before being sent back to Shakuras by four particle disruptor hits.

Tara glanced at the unit count again. It had reached over a thousand. This was enough.

“Templar, warp back to Shakuras. You have done though.” The Daelaam obeyed, and the remaining forces disappeared in waves of light beams. Tara smirked and gave out a command.

The crystal in the mothership started to glow intensely. It got brighter and brighter, and after a few seconds it contracted and exploded. Tara had activated the self destruction sequence of the ship.

The explosion happened quickly and consumed half the ship almost instantly. Tal’darim warriors were being evaporated before they knew what happened. Their plasma shields blinked before disappearing. Everything, zealots, slayers, and even war prisms, were destroyed without having any chance.

The explosion was reaching the bridge. Tara gave one last glance at her beloved ship before warping away.

Tara had considered bringing the mothership back, but in her attempt to delay the tal’darim fleet she had allowed the tal’darim to fully surround her ship, preventing her from entering warp space. Left with no escape, she decided to make it self explode and do as much to the enemies damage as possible.

In his flagship, Ma’lash stood in shock as the mothership was consumed by flames. He had lost around a thousand ground units and around twenty war prisms. He had also lost the mothership that he could’ve captured. The units lost were mostly low level zealots and slayers, but that was still a huge loss. Ma’lash had sent out his most loyal followers. They were those that were willing to give their lives for the Highlord without any hesitation. Units with such loyalty were rare in the tal’darim world, and Ma’lash had just lost a large portion of them for no result.

“Report.” He ordered darkly.

A zealot moved forward. He didn’t like this dangerous job, but he had no choice.

“We lost five carriers. The rest are wounded to a certain degree. 62% of the interceptors are destroyed. 23% of the scouts and 14% of the phoenixes are destroyed. We lost 12 destroyers. We lost 612 zealots, 421 slayers, and 21 war prisms in the assault. The shield of one of the motherships is depleted. The other two motherships are down to around half the shield.”

Ma’lash growled and wasn’t afraid of showing his anger. Rogue psionic energy ravaged through the bridge. One of the zealots was a bit unlucky and was in the way of the psionic energy. The psi energy ripped open his armor and obliterated his body. The other tal’darim were silent as one of their comrades died for no reason.

The losses were heavy, and more importantly the prize was less than the cost. All the Daelaam ships were either destroyed or evacuated. He got nothing....well, almost nothing.

“Send forces to the facility below. Take what you can and execute all the firstborn…” He was cut off when he heard beeping noise from a control panel.

“Highlord, we are detecting massive amount of jump signals.” The zealot sounded dire.

“How many?” Ma’lash asked, learning for his mistake.

“85.”