The battle continued all the way until 5:20 in the morning, and in every direction around Mar Sara, the ground before the defensive ramparts was piled with the corpses of infected Terrans and Zerg creatures, their blood staining the entire battlefield red.
The defensive line had been shattered multiple times by the swarm and then reclaimed by Augustus's soldiers, and the number of casualties had already exceeded the total number of deaths the Royal Guard Division had suffered in all previous battles.
The number of infected people had already surpassed Augustus's estimates; it even seemed higher than the total number of missing and deceased on Mar Sara. Revolutionary Army scientists could only speculate that either the Confederacy's xeno-labs on Mar Sara had used people from other planets for experiments, or the infected could even reproduce on their own.
The Jormungand Brood the Korhal Revolutionary Army faced was both a hive that primarily carried out attack orders and one of the largest and most powerful Zerg broods. It was only a matter of time before they overwhelmed the already-abandoned Mar Sara colony.
By the time the last wave of transport ships lifted off from the spaceport, the rampart where Augustus stood had already accumulated an uncountable number of corpses of the infected. The piled remains had formed a mound, raising the ground level by about 1.2 to 1.5 meters. This allowed the infected, even without using ladders, to step on the mountain of bodies and climb up onto the rampart.
This undoubtedly lowered the effective height of the fortifications, enabling the wave of alien creatures surging behind them to tread upon the corpses of those before them and mount the high walls. More numerous than grains of sand, the infected Terrans shambled toward the ramparts on all sides, resembling a vast black tide.
Meanwhile, at the launch port atop the central platform of the spaceport, transport ships continued to lift off without pause. Every half hour, large numbers of transport ships would drag red-orange exhaust trails behind them as they rapidly climbed into the sky.
A large swarm of Zerg flying creatures closely pursued these ships, engaging in perilous high-altitude duels with brave Terran fighter pilots while simultaneously converging on the rapidly ascending transports.
From time to time, the giant flesh-colored bats that the Revolutionary Army's xeno-biologists had named "exploding mosquitoes" slammed into the thrusters at the rear of the transports, blowing the straight-climbing ships into balls of fire. The disintegrating fragments of the transports, torn apart amid shrieks, fell toward the ground like fireworks, and the people inside either died instantly before they could react or were burned alive.
And when the exploding mosquitoes dove toward the ground, they undoubtedly became terrifying living bombs.
Anyone who had lived through all of this would never forget that heart-stopping night for the rest of their lives.
"How many waves of evacuees has this been?" Augustus swung his Gauss rifle, its magazine emptied, at the infected people climbing onto the rampart by stepping on countless corpses, blasting one of them until its brains burst.
Beside Augustus, Kerrigan held her C-10 canister rifle and precisely blew apart two grotesquely twisted infected; then she flicked her fiery red hair and turned to kill, one by one, the infected climbing up from the other side of the rampart.
Even Kerrigan was utterly exhausted after fighting through the night, and her forehead was covered with fine droplets of sweat. Corporal Faraday, clad in deep-red CMC-300 power armor, gripped a railgun and fired at a Hydralisk mixed within the horde of infected people. A single MK-12 penetrator round shattered the monster's spike- and fang-covered lower jaw, and each spent casing that ejected onto the ground landed with a dull thud.
Corpses lay everywhere around them—Revolutionary Army soldiers, vast numbers of infected, and Zerg. Those infected who no longer resembled what they once had been were now merely alien monstrosities vaguely shaped like humans, twisted masses of writhing flesh formed by fused, aberrant tissue-carapace and curled tendrils.
Their clothing, hats, power armor, and everything they had worn when still human had become mixtures of veins and sinew, looking like tumors embedded with fragments of metal and fabric.
"The control tower swore that was the last batch; everyone has successfully evacuated," a communications operator in the command center replied.
"The transports sent by the fleet to pick us up will reach the surface in fifteen minutes. General Officer Warfield says they've been pinned down by the Zerg air force and can't spare any more personnel to assist us."
"Listen up, boys. Rescue arrives in fifteen minutes. Hold out—we're about to be saved. Take care of the wounded; if we can't bring our comrades' bodies with us, burn them rather than leave them for the swarm." As Augustus replaced the magazine in his weapon, he switched over to the command channel.
"Korhal's tough men—each and every one of you is a hero."
As Augustus spoke, a Mutalisk with a bright purple carapace plunged down through the air amid the whistle of bullets. This monster, whose wingspan exceeded about ten meters, swept in from low altitude like a snowy owl diving to kill, descending directly above two of the Marshal's Elite Guard standing beside Augustus.
"Lanzel, shoot above your heads!" Augustus raised his Gauss rifle and began firing at the diving drake; at this point, his stance was no longer as steady as before, causing many rounds to miss.
The two Elite Guards immediately raised their weapons and fired upward upon hearing the order.
The mutalisk, after all, was still made of flesh and blood. Its spread membranes quickly accumulated numerous holes, as though its wings had been pierced through. But this did not affect its ability to fly; it truly resembled an evil dragon descending from the sky, casting a rapidly moving shadow across the ground.
A few hours earlier, Zerg flying creatures had still been unable to recklessly invade the airspace above the spaceport and defensive lines under the Revolutionary Army's cover of anti-air missiles and machine guns. But now their numbers had grown ever larger, while human anti-air fire continued to weaken.
After descending to an altitude of about twelve to fifteen meters, the mutalisk's ovipositor at the tip of its serpentine tail precisely launched at least a dozen bright-green symbiotic organisms.
The Revolutionary Army soldier standing lowest on the ground was instantly blown into fragments, his armor and bones dissolved by acid; his scream vanished in that same moment.
Then several more symbiotes bounced and landed at the feet of another nearby soldier. Within an extremely short span of time, the symbiotes shriveled into a vivid green, completing a brief lifecycle from birth to decay.
[Bang—]
"Sarah, take it down!" Augustus shouted.
Hearing Augustus's call, Kerrigan turned. A psionic's natural talent for shooting was practically innate; within seconds she completed the steps of aiming and firing. A 25 mm canister round shot forth with a sharp shriek, striking the mutalisk's body. It immediately let out a scream and fell, smashing a dent into the defensive wall.
But even so, the mutalisk was still alive after the fall. One of its wings was clearly completely broken, hanging limply; its body was riddled with bullet wounds, and blood streamed from the injuries across its body down onto the ground.
The mutalisk roared on the uneven alloy ground like a wild beast out of control, struggling and opening its bloody maw toward the nearest enemy—until Augustus accurately threw an electromagnetic grenade into its gaping reproductive organ, its shattered flesh splattering everywhere.
Augustus had no time to rejoice before another massive wave of infected climbed over the rampart, and by now, fewer than one in ten of the warriors defending this position remained alive.
Corpses were everywhere, each death unimaginably gruesome: some had been corroded into piles of black residue by acid; some had both hands severed at the base by Hydralisks; and others had been grabbed by infected, dragged off the rampart, and torn into pieces.
"Reserve Battalion, reinforce the front immediately—we need support." Augustus drew a deep breath and charged toward the nearest infected.
It was an infected Omega Squad Marine. On his pitch-black CMC power armor, one could still faintly see the honor engravings of the past; the white inverted-U insignia and skull emblem were now covered by layers of proliferating tissue and pulsating sinew.
The Omega Squad Marine's matte orange helmet looked like a shattered eggshell. A pitch-black hole had opened where the visor once was, and several flesh-colored tendrils protruded from the jagged edges. The internal computer within the power armor was still operating, but its comms carried nothing but chaotic electrical noise.
The Confederate Marine still clutched his Gauss rifle tightly, yet he had already forgotten how to fire it—less capable than a chimpanzee that knew how to use a stick.
Before enlistment, all Confederate recruits swore never to abandon their rifles; the rifle was their best friend, their life. But now the swarm had truly fused him with his rifle forever. That weapon, covered in tendrils and tumor-like growths, had already become part of him—an organ rather than a tool.
He may once have been no more than a reconditioned convict who had undergone brainwashing and neural excision surgery, a living corpse without a soul. Yet becoming part of the swarm had not granted this soldier any freedom. Perhaps death was the only eternal release.
Assimilated by the Jormungand Brood, this soldier—who once could run fast enough to catch up with hoverbikes—was no longer as agile as before. Dragging his spasming, twisted body, he moved slowly, muttering and repeating phrases over and over. Nothing more than words about loyalty and the Confederate people, the kind that appeared endlessly on recruitment posters.
The spikes and long claws that had grown from the infected's joints and bones were enough to tear apart a fully armed human soldier; anyone who underestimated these pitiful monsters ended up as shredded meat or as one of them.
For humans assimilated by the Zerg, pain and all other sensations no longer existed, and the emotion of fear was nothing more than a distant memory. He existed only as a sentinel defending the Jormungand Brood.
In an instant, Augustus fired a burst of spike rounds at the monster, the clattering of bullets striking its armor echoing without pause.
Under the powerful fire of the Gauss rifle, the creature fell without any honor or dignity; its posture in death bore no resemblance to that of a celebrated Confederate warrior, and only its silhouette faintly revealed that it had once been human.
Immediately afterward, more infected Omega Squad Marines climbed onto the rampart, their power-armor boots with upturned armor plates scraping against the alloy surface and producing waves of sharp, teeth-grinding noise.
The horde of infected charged forward in unending succession, climbing over the corpses of their own kind; every time one infected fell, more would take its place.
"Tychus!" Augustus roared.
"Damn endless alien freaks!" At this moment, Tychus, who was on the nearby platform, noticed the situation beside Augustus. He immediately gripped the handle of his heavy machine gun and swept a volley across the Omega Squad Marines until every last round had been fired.
"Die! Die!"
Once the assistant gunner shouted that they were out of ammunition, Tychus simply grabbed a Gauss rifle and came down, shouting vulgar curses like "bastard" as he blew open the skull of the last Omega Marine still standing.
At this moment, the infected beneath the rampart began to thin out, replaced instead by actual Zerg. Clearly, the cerebrate of the Jormungand Brood had grown tired of making humans fight humans and was no longer amused by the infected as its newest toy.
A fiercer assault was about to begin. And Augustus knew that his exhausted warriors no longer had the strength to withstand another wave.
"I've never fought a war like this. I thought we came to Mar Sara to kill bugs—but now it's turned into a zombie game." Tychus walked up beside Augustus. "Got a smoke, boss?"
"You might as well check whether any of those people had cigarettes on them." Taking advantage of the brief pause as the swarm reorganized its attack, Augustus finally managed to catch his breath.
"And where's Jimmy boy? I haven't heard anything from him in ages. Him running off to save those pointy-headed Protoss feels like it happened a century ago." Hearing what Augustus said, Tychus actually began rummaging through the chunks of Omega Marines—but he was looking for bullets, not cigarettes.
"Makes me miss him."
"You care about him that much?" Augustus said.
"A little." Tychus said.
"Mm." Augustus nodded. "Jimmy already got there more than an hour ago, but those surrounded Protoss had absolutely no intention of being rescued."
"More precisely, those Protoss warriors came to help us hold off the Zerg. And each one of them can take on a hundred."
"Well, that's a damn good deal." Tychus grinned.
"These golden Protoss are worlds apart from the Tal'darim. If you hadn't said so, I would never have believed that anyone in this universe would willingly throw away their life for someone else—let alone an alien."
"You can't think like that, Tychus. There are always good people among humans, and there are good aliens too," Augustus said. "We're just unlucky enough—and lucky enough—that the Protoss in the Sara System happen to be the kind who don't want to harm humanity."
"That part's obvious. You and Jimmy are both model good guys, and I'm the bad one. But since those Protoss didn't need us to save them, doesn't that mean we made the trip for nothing?" Tychus spread his hands.
"To be precise, I achieved my goal. The Protoss sensed our goodwill, and because of that, they were willing to have a brief exchange with Raynor. You could say we've already built a bridge of communication with the Protoss of the Sara System."
"I look forward to a direct conversation with the Protoss fleet commander."
"So what you're really saying is that you don't give a damn whether those aliens live or die. You didn't save them out of some damned sympathy—you did it for political reasons. I could tell from your old man already; every politician's heart is filthy." Tychus cursed.
"So, where's Jimmy?" To be honest, compared to whatever happened to the aliens, Tychus cared a lot more about Raynor.
"Not long ago he said he was almost here—and that he was bringing reinforcements." As Augustus looked at Tychus, streaks of light appeared on the distant horizon.
Five Revolutionary Army patrol boats were charging at the front, followed immediately by the Protoss' radiant golden fighters and transports. These Protoss craft had elegant hulls and butterfly-like wings; the bee-like interceptors buzzed across the low sky, while crescent-shaped warships and slender pillar-shaped scouts followed right behind.
The golden squadrons of fighters and warships were like countless golden stars flying in from the horizon, their brilliant glow scattering like falling gold.
"Reinforcements have arrived, warriors. Gather your gear and prepare to board—don't leave anyone behind." Augustus said over the comm channel.
A round of sparse, half-hearted cheers rose around them; the warriors were exhausted, and they didn't exactly trust the Protoss who had just bombarded Chau Sara.
"You sure they're not here to finish us off?" In Tychus' voice, fear still outweighed excitement.
"Damn, they're really loaded. These fighters must be worth a fortune—think they'd sell us some?" Tychus shrugged and said.
"Price is negotiable. We'll just resell them to the Umojans—"
---
I will post some extra Chapters in Patreon, you can check it out. >> patreon.com/TitoVillar
---