"Specific location?"
"Block 411, in the northern district of Mar Sara City—this can be found on any satellite map, Marshal."
"Relay my order to General Officer James Raynor: he is to immediately lead his troops to that location and carry out a rescue mission. Note that the rescue targets are Protoss." Augustus used his communicator to transmit his order with perfect precision.
"Yes, Marshal. This group of ships is about to launch, and the Chief of the General Staff asked me to confirm with you—"
"I'm staying on the surface, young man, until everyone has fully evacuated."
As Augustus spoke, he was already walking toward the outer defensive-works wall of the spaceport, climbing a metal ladder that had been pieced together and attached to the defensive structure—its paristeel frame widened and reinforced.
Carrying a C-10 rifle, the red-haired Kerrigan followed closely behind Augustus, with Corporal Faraday, Tychus, and a squad from the Marshal's Elite Guard trailing after her.
"Damn, this is something else… Jimmy-boy is gonna be downright shocked, isn't he? He'll definitely ask whether our Marshal is joking." As the burly Tychus climbed the ladder in his powered armor, the soldiers behind him all felt the ladder swaying dangerously.
"I've learned plenty from dealing with the Tal'darim Protoss—that the Protoss are an extremely arrogant species that looks down on all life. Just like bugs, it's useless to talk to Protoss about morality or mercy, because they don't have those concepts at all. The Protoss have a temper like a latrine stone—foul and hard." Tychus continued voicing his opinions of the Protoss to Augustus.
"I agree with you, Tychus. But in other words, that description fits you quite well too." Augustus stepped onto the wide defensive-works wall, looking down at Mar Sara City beyond.
In less than four days, the Revolution Army's engineering corps had used modular plates and all available materials from the Mar Sara Spaceport and the Federation's engineering stations to build this solid defensive line—yet everyone merely hoped it could hold off the Zerg for as long as possible.
Fully armed Revolution Army soldiers stood atop the defensive-works wall, with electromagnetic cannons, Gauss heavy machine guns, and flamethrowers emplaced, and dozens of spinning surface-to-ground missiles ready to open fire at any moment. When Augustus climbed up onto the wall, the officers and soldiers there immediately saluted him.
With Augustus' arrival, the warriors were clearly full of fighting spirit. One could well imagine that even if they were ordered to charge straight into the Zerg lair, these iron-blooded soldiers would not hesitate in the slightest.
"I don't see it that way." Tychus' gaze sharpened and he was about to flare up, but he did not dare lose his temper at Augustus. Face flushed purple from holding it in, Tychus then heard a burst of laughter behind him, and could only turn his shame into anger and bellow at the Marshal's Elite Guard behind him.
"No laughing! Damn it, you idiots are only fit to kiss my ass!"
"Got a problem with my Marshal's Elite Guard? Every single one of them is a hundred times stronger than you. If they'd stayed in the Army, they would already be officers by now." Standing right behind Tychus, Corporal Faraday had his face spattered with the other man's saliva.
Corporal Faraday immediately said angrily, "And what are you supposed to be? If Marshal Augustus didn't value you, you'd just be a bandit or a brigand right now."
Tychus instantly froze in place, his face full of rage, veins bulging on his cheeks; from the look of him, he was about ready to start a serious fight.
But Tychus was not a brainless man; all of his bluster was to satisfy his own aims. He knew that the Marshal's personal guards enjoyed their commander's deep trust, and that offending these people was a very bad idea—the thing he feared most was this kind of pillow talk.
"Now's not the time for a fight. Next time, I'll definitely have a proper match with you." Tychus tossed out a bit of face-saving talk, then slunk off to catch up with Augustus.
"The Protoss have indeed helped us quite a bit, Tychus." Augustus paid no attention to Tychus' outburst, because he knew the latter cooled down just as quickly as he flared up.
"There have been sighting reports of Protoss ground forces everywhere, and at least hundreds of thousands of people have been saved by their actions holding back the Zerg. And if the Protoss didn't care whether we lived or died, they could simply use their star-killing weapons to destroy all of Mar Sara." Augustus did not look at Tychus, only gazed out into the profound darkness beyond the defensive-works wall.
"This proves that the Protoss hope—or rather, are striving—to ensure that all Terrans survive. As for planets, cities, and Terrans whom the Protoss deem infected beyond cure, they will burn them clean along with the Zerg without the slightest hesitation."
The area before Augustus had once been a lush central park; in the dry and barren Mar Sara, this central park had been an exceedingly rare and beautiful sight, for it even contained more than a dozen geysers and dense groves at its center. The people of Mar Sara City had once described it as the worst vanity project of the century, yet now this beautiful park was covered beneath a thick, purple-black creep.
Many vehicles belonging to high officials and their families were parked in the park, but at this moment they had already become twisted alloy frames wrapped in tumors and slime. The ground was strewn with shattered glass and broken paving tiles; countless Zerg were gathering in the darkness, their red eyes glowing faintly in the night.
The swarm was approaching from the south of the spaceport. Large numbers of Zerg were crossing the central park in front of the defensive-works wall and running northward. The nearest Zerg to Augustus' position were only two or three hundred yards from the muzzles of the Revolution Army's machine guns, and the soldiers atop the wall could even see the glowing red eyes of the Zerglings and the Hydra-like frilled crests of the Hydralisks under the searchlights.
The sound of innumerable claws striking the ground, combined with the scraping of the Hydralisks' keratin belly scales, merged into something like a roar. In Augustus' memory, he had only ever heard such a sound in documentary footage—millions of wildebeests stampeding across the African savanna during migration.
What puzzled Augustus, however, was that most of the Zerg ignored the brightly lit spaceport and instead ran toward the already-fallen northern part of the city.
"That direction… is it Protoss?" Augustus looked toward that direction.
"The Protoss are far more attractive to the Zerg than Terrans are." Kerrigan came to stand at Augustus' right, tapping the goggles on her forehead.
"Find and devour all Protoss—that is the deepest imprint inscribed in Zerg genetics. The Zerg react strongly to our psionics; this may be because they mistake Terran psionics for Protoss." She focused intently on the thoughts of all Zerg within a one-mile radius, discovering that their simple and singular minds held only the desire to devour the Protoss.
"The Tal'darim already made it very clear to us: in their species, every Protoss is a psionic, and bugs like psionics the most." Tychus patted his backside and walked over.
"Every Protoss is an annoying telepath—every Protoss can read minds. A level-five psionic can make the Zerg charge in from more than a dozen light-years away just by the scent of it. With so many Protoss gathered together, of course the bugs are going to go completely crazy."
"We still know far too little about these two species." Kerrigan shook her head.
"Why did the Jormungand Brood—or rather, the Zerg—invade the Sara system? What kind of historical connection exists between the Protoss and the Zerg?" she said. "It couldn't be more obvious: the Protoss and the Zerg knew of each other's existence long before we did."
"Humans start wars for many reasons, nothing more than cultural conflict and the pursuit of territory and resources. But the Zerg and the Protoss? We can't make sense of what they're thinking, just as mice and ants can't understand what humans are thinking."
"We'll figure it out. What we lack with extraterrestrials is nothing but a deep, thorough exchange." Augustus said.
"Maybe we can reason with the Protoss—but the Zerg?" Kerrigan said.
"To deal with the Zerg, what we can do is join forces with the Protoss to crush them." And as Augustus spoke, he opened a portable holoprojector he carried with him. "Of course, what I'd prefer most is to directly or indirectly control a brood force."
The holoprojector itself only had projection capability; its only and primary function was to project a small holographic map of Mar Sara City before Augustus.
On this holographic map, red triangles represented the Zerg, while ice-blue squares symbolized the Protoss. At this moment, large numbers of red triangles were converging toward the northern part of the city, like a stream of hot vapor venting from a battlecruiser's pressure-release valve against the glowing green background.
The ice-blue squares representing the Protoss were being devoured at high speed by the Zerg, while the dark-green icon of the Terran rescue forces was tearing open a gap in the swarm like a sharp blade.
"Well done, Jimmy." Augustus said as he looked at the screen.
Just as they were speaking, the roar of transports lifting off and the cheers of the crowd rose again behind Augustus and the others—more people were escaping from this literal hell on earth.
In the distance, the swarm answered with waves of furious roars; sharp screeches and the sound of beating wings grew ever closer, as though billions of giant locusts were flapping their wings at the same time.
"Bugs aren't blind, after all." Tychus drawled in his deep, magnetic voice. "They're almost here."
Just as Tychus said, the sudden appearance of large numbers of flying Zerg creatures in the sky sounded the alarm for everyone.
The massive Overlords hovered in the high air like hot-air balloons. Although to the Terrans on the ground they appeared only as black dots overhead, these grotesque chimeras—part crab pincer, part jellyfish body, part overlapping carapace—were far larger than the Zerglings or Hydralisks below.
Thousands of Overlords floated high above, like balloons drifting between the tall buildings of Mar Sara's central district.
Around every Overlord circled dozens—or even more—Mutalisks. These flying creatures, absorbed into the swarm's genetic library, possessed terrifying fangs and claws, along with a pair of wide membranous wings. Their serpentine bodies made up most of their mass, resembling biological cannons that ceaselessly spat acid.
Each Mutalisk had many pairs of orange-red eyes, appearing in the air like red dots signaling danger.
Surrounding the Overlords and Mutalisks were large numbers of creatures resembling flying crabs or giant bats—especially the latter. These flesh-colored bats with huge wings clearly had no fear of Terran firepower.
The moment they spotted Terran fighters or transports, they would rush straight at them. Even without the terrifying explosions triggered by the chemical reactions within their bodies, simply colliding head-on with a fighter jet or starship traveling at high speed would be a catastrophic disaster.
On the ground, the Jormungand Brood's Hydralisks were even more numerous than the Zerglings. From the surface appearance, roughly seven or eight giant Hydralisks—each with blood-red carapaces and enormous frilled crests—were leading their kin.
"The bugs are here!" a soldier on the watchtower shouted, and everyone threw themselves into position.
"I could use killing a few tons of bugs to wake myself up." Tychus' foul temperament showed in every way, but he was undoubtedly a Zerg-killing enthusiast. "I've killed plenty of bugs already—what's a few more?"
"Only dead bugs are good bugs."
Tychus said this as he stepped onto a nearby machine-gun tower, "politely" ordering the main gunner to get off, then pulled up the heavy machine gun and happily began firing.
This man might be a foul-tempered scoundrel, but when it came to doing bad things or fighting a war, the villain Tychus was never sloppy.
"The enemy's only fit to lick our assholes!" Tychus cursed and roared, spent casings flying beneath the orange muzzle flash.
"Free fire! Do not conserve ammunition!" When the commander atop the fortification wall gave the order, everyone on the defensive-works wall opened fire at once.
The frontmost Zerglings and Hydralisks fell immediately under the Revolution Army's concentrated firepower; blood, shattered carapace, and shrieks filled the night sky.
Before battle, each soldier had injected themselves with a dose of modified Umojan enhancers, whose adrenaline surge could continuously sustain them for more than six hours.
One Zerg after another collapsed before the Terrans' Gauss rifles. The 8mm Impaler spike rounds could easily tear through Terran skin and body armor, yet the soldiers had to expend many rounds to penetrate the Zerg's hardened chitin armor; and to deal with Ultralisks now required specially made depleted-uranium penetrators before any effect could be seen.
Augustus stood shoulder to shoulder with the other soldiers, gripping his Gauss rifle and firing controlled shots at the Zerg approaching the defensive-works wall. At first Augustus still had the spare focus to aim, but later the number of Zerg became so great that he could sweep targets easily without aiming.
Large swathes of flying Zerg creatures swept past the front of the fortification wall, spraying the Terran soldiers below with streams of green, highly corrosive acid. Even a small splash was enough to make the plates of powered armor begin to melt. Many people were completely dissolved by the acid spat from the Mutalisk swarms and flying crab-like creatures; they only had time to let out a few screams before collapsing in twisted heaps, like cardboard dissolving in strong acid or thin paper figures curling in flame.
Only a patch of black residue remained.
The Revolution Army's anti-air fire brought down many of the flying Zerg, but their numbers were still overwhelming.
Masses of Zerglings and Hydralisks fell before the fortification wall, until blood covered the ground and fragments of organs and carapace nearly blanketed the earth.
Then, without any warning, the Zerg briefly withdrew.
But soon, in the darkness, came inhuman roars—the death-cries of Terrans whose vocal cords had long since dried.
One staggering infested creature after another—mutated abominations that had once been human—began approaching the base from all directions. Some of these infested even still wore damaged powered armor, Gauss rifles in their hands, their mouths shouting slogans once used to fight for the ideals of the Confederacy or the Revolution.
Now, these humans who had turned in loyalty to the swarm shambled toward their former kin, claws outstretched, the rips at the corners of their mouths filled with tentacles and saliva.
"Hold fast, my warriors!" Augustus shouted.
"Neither the Confederacy, the Protoss, nor the Zerg can break us!"
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