Augustus leaned over the long battle table in the command room, and occasionally stood up to receive a stack of reports from the mining area and the fleet from Kerrigan who was walking around.
The command center was high enough to overlook the entire fortress under construction. The island-style command room at the top was surrounded by bright glass. Augustus only had to look up to see the military barracks, warehouses and symmetrical anti-aircraft missile towers.
On the combat map composed of holographic projections, hundreds of shining federal colonial worlds are clearly visible. Hundreds of billions of planets are like dust made of light, with Tarsonis as the center in a linear line towards the edge of the Koprulu sector.
Distributed on many planets.
When Augustus flipped the star map composed of light and shadow, some planets flickered gently: Edna, Atticus, Taurus, Brysis α, Pontifus, Sigma Prime...
...These planets are marked with the red and blue flags of the Terran Confederation, while Antiga and Mar Sara have the red flags of the Revolutionary Army.
Other distant planets, such as Luria IV and Aeneas, are respectively labeled as mining colonies of the Kemorian Consortium and affiliated worlds of the United Umoyan United States.
The Kaimorian Consortium once had a vast territory and countless mining worlds, but now it has shrunk to a corner of Moria. The expansion ambitions of the United Umoyan Republic are far less than that of its two brothers in the Koprulu sector.
, so the sphere of influence has always been maintained within a limited scope.
The Revolutionary Army's planet on the edge world almost overlapped with the Zerg's homeworld, which invisibly prevented the Federation fleet from going deep. The Protoss' planet had always been hidden in the mist, and Augustus only knew about the planet.
The Spirit Empire had many colonies during its golden age.
The fleets of the Revolutionary Army and the Protoss Expeditionary Force are also parked on the three-dimensional holographic projection of Mar Sara, while Zeratul's troops are always hiding in the shadows.
"Where are those Camorians? Lieutenant Roland should have brought their mining directors over by now." At this time, Augustus suddenly remembered something and raised his head to ask Kerrigan.
"what happened."
Kerrigan looked at Augustus: "Confirming with the lieutenant's troops."
"...I just received an urgent report from Roland's platoon."
"Something must have gone wrong." Augustus said, "Come in."
"Roland Orom calls the command center, we need more reinforcements!" When Lieutenant Roland's voice came from the communication channel in the command room, both Augustus and Kerrigan heard the click of the Gauss rifle.
Sound of shooting.
When they heard the familiar shrill chirping of insects, their expressions immediately became serious. - There are zerg in Mar Sara.
"Who are the enemies and how many people (worms) are there?" Augustus's voice was very calm, and there was no trace of panic.
"Infected camorians... mutated creatures... zerg!" Lieutenant Roland's voice was broken: "They are pouring out of the mines continuously, and we will be unable to resist them.
Already..."
Several screams came from the revolutionary army lieutenant's channel, but they were not from him.
"Call Jim over here... How many troops do we have at hand?" Augustus frowned: "Mar Sara has a psychic disruptor, where did these zerg come from? Could it be that
The protoss fleet's bombardment did not completely clear the planet of zerg."
"White Rock Base is stationed with two full battalions of the Guards Division and two platoons of Red Devil Firebats. The mobile force that can arrive the fastest to support is the Reaper's Death Company," Kerrigan said.
"The Reapers are the elite among the elite. Captain Xiao is ordered to immediately go to the location where Lieutenant Roland last uploaded." Augustus immediately ordered.
"Deploy a Guards Battalion, have the Firebats prepare fuel tanks, and clear out the bugs first, so that we can figure out what happened." He said, "Prepare the command vehicle.
"Tell my officers that I want to hear when I get to the scene that they have sorted everything out."
"Yes, sir," Kerrigan said.
Augustus picked up the gloves he had placed on the combat table, walked out of the command room and entered a wide passage consisting of a slope. Jim Raynor, who was rushing in, bumped into him.
"You came just in time." Augustus said to Renault: "Jimmy, maybe we will have to command the troops.
The entire White Stone Fortress acted on Augustus's order, and fighter planes roared over the fortress. The workers stopped and asked the passing soldiers what happened, and all of them mentioned the war.
The flow of people in the military camp began to flow rapidly. Soldiers put on power armor and weapons as quickly as possible. Tanks and Goliath armed robots also drove out of the garage, and the torrent of steel rolled forward. Two reorganized Air Force Wraith Squadrons were also there.
Augustus came to support, and when it came to the issue of zerg, everyone's nerves were highly tense.
When the armored command vehicle that Augustus was riding in arrived at the entrance to the tunnel in the Kemerian mining area, the air was filled with the smell of burnt protein and blood.
This is a mining complex composed of alloy buildings and sheds. A wide road crosses the entire miner's residential area and leads directly to the mine. Now this road is scattered with various tools and personal belongings of the Camorian miners.
, there were smelly and red blood stains everywhere.
Some brown-gray zerg chitin covers the surface of these buildings, but it is not obvious. Some immature granules extend on these buildings like ivy, slowly wrapping everything in them.
Bizarre and twisted infected human corpses can be seen everywhere. These monsters, covered with protruding spikes and deformations, are lying on the road. Either the bullets have reached the sieve, or the fire bats have been burned to ashes.
A few hundred yards away is the entrance to a tunnel that leads directly to the ground. There are fire bat troops standing there with gold-red devil symbols painted on their armor. Even now, they still block the entrance of the tunnel and use the flamethrowers in their hands to burn the entrance.
Monsters surged out of it, and burning crackling sounds came one after another.
"Lieutenant Roland, you can tell me what happened." Augustus picked up a fragment of the flag with the KM logo written on it from the ground. The letters representing a family guild in Moria had already been covered in blood and
Erased by fire.
"Marshal, I have not completed your mission." Lieutenant Roland is a short Mrs. Mainho. He is an exception among his generally muscular family members. However, Mrs. Mainho is good at creativity.
Roland's perseverance is also evident in his character.
"This is not your fault." Augustus waved his hand to calm him down: "On the contrary, I would like to commend you for your heroic performance in this encounter."
"...It is our duty to fight." Roland saluted Augustus.
Then, Roland began to tell Augustus what happened: "At the beginning, we did receive a signal from Kemorian, which repeatedly showed us that they belonged to the Vito Mining Guild."
"But after we entered their camp, we found that it had already been infected by zerg. There were hateful infected creatures everywhere. No living person spoke to us anymore. The mercenaries guarding here were also long dead.
, their bodies were torn apart and covered with abscesses.”
He said: "These zerg virus-infected creatures are slow to move, but once they die or get close to my soldiers, they will self-destruct, and they are more powerful than our best pulse grenades."
"Most of the casualties among my troops are caused by the self-destruction of the infected."
"So, it is impossible for anyone to send signals to you in this area. So who was the first person to contact you?" Renault, standing next to Augustus, stared at the mutated creatures that were still pouring out.
of mines.
"We can't figure it out, general." Lieutenant Roland had an embarrassed expression on his face: "But the machine can't speak on its own."
"Based on the current scene, it is unlikely that there will be survivors here." Kerrigan also said.
"Lieutenant, we found the relics of the leader of the Kemorian mining team in his private room - there will be a strange body." A revolutionary soldier who ran quickly told Roland and Augustus
All reported.
"Go and have a look." Augustus asked the soldier to lead the way.
"We must find out whether these monsters escaped the protoss' cannon fire or just came from other places." He said.
Augustus didn't go far before he came to where the soldier said the company house was. It was a higher-end house with glass windows and wooden floors, used as a surface between the company and other members of the mining team.
Differences in status.
In this small house, overturned cabinets were mixed with piles of clothes and bloody blood spots. A man lying in front of the table looked up at the still-lit room in a very monstrous posture.
Laptop screen, his blue-green uniform has been pierced by protruding blocky muscles, spikes, carapace and teeth.
What made Augustus and others shudder was that a sickle-shaped brown-black spike from a piece of zerg tissue was piercing deeply into the man's spine.
"What is that?" Renault has always been very courageous. He took down a photo frame from the table. On it was a photo of the man and his family. On the back of the photo was written a proverb from the Moria satellite, with the same handwriting.
The writing and style are very beautiful, and the general idea is that the shooting stars look forward to the moon, and I will wait for you to come back.
"The swarm controlled him." Kerrigan wrinkled her nose: "They retained this man's brain and controlled him to send information to the outside world - but it seems that it was more than that."
"I read some sad news from this living brain." Kerrigan took a few steps around the man's chair.
"They discovered Mar Sara long before us. This was just a trial mining. Although it was in a dangerous Zerg-occupied area, the CEO of the Vito Guild promised a generous reward, and the reward was huge.
There must be brave men below," Kerrigan said.
"So the bravest people in the guild came with a fighting spirit, and the rest of the mining team were contract workers who were bound by debts and illegal contracts," she said.
"The Kaimorian mining team soon discovered an underground mine that had been preserved from the bombardment of the Protoss fleet. This mine went thousands of feet underground. Inside it was distributed extremely precious special crystal deposits. This crystal mine was
It has a gold-like light, and its value per standard load unit is twice that of ordinary Adeen crystal."
"Is it ghost gold? Or gold mine?" Augustus said in an unintelligible voice.
"No matter what, clean up this mining area immediately."
"I heard you all, tell Hank's bad boy pyromaniacs that we need to continue to advance." Raynor ordered: "Immediately draw manpower from the Reapers, Firebats and Rangers to form a spearhead, and I will personally lead the team.
"
"There is a bottomless nest deep in this mine, which contains a large number of cave bats that have been assimilated by the zerg infection and a large number of infected humans." Kerrigan said: "The first person to enter the mine to explore will
The terrible monster was brought back among the people, and before they knew what was going on, they were torn to pieces by the monster that lurks day and night."
"I suspect that there is at least one zerg queen hiding in this mine. This creature has some obvious intelligence that allows her to use simple strategies to capture prey by trapping or setting up ambush instead of attacking from the front."
"Deep underground..." Augustus looked at Kerrigan: "We all know that the protoss' attack on Mar Sara was not as thorough as we thought, and not all the main gun beams
They’ve all penetrated the earth’s crust.”
"If an underground insect nest is lucky enough, they may escape the disaster. This is a warning that Mar Sara is not as safe as we think, far away from insect pests. The zerg may be hiding underground, waiting.
A chance of resurgence." He said after thinking for a moment.
"Send sweeps forces across Mar Sara to search for all possible surviving zerg hives, focusing on areas where zerg have appeared in the past."
"...Let Colonel Pryor and Harnak's troops be in charge. The soldiers from the Sara system are always eager to take revenge on the zerg that once invaded their homeland."
"Bury these Camorians." Augustus looked at the photo album in Renault's hand, which showed a photo of the leader of the Camorians and his fiancée.
"Find his family as much as possible and send the relics back."
"I'll arrange for someone to go there right away... uh..." Kerrigan suddenly covered her forehead while speaking, and Augustus immediately hugged the crumbling tower.
"Scream!"
"What? I didn't hear anything." Augustus was sure that he did not hear such a sound.
"That comes from... uh..."
"Maybe you need a good rest, dear." Augustus supported Kerrigan.
Not long after, another black shadow appeared in front of Augustus, and Zeratul emerged from it.
"Augustus, my brother, the prophecy confirms my worries. The human psyker who escaped in Haji has been reborn in Char." Zeratul, the dark patriarch wearing purple robes and black armor, appeared.
It was like a sudden gust of wind.
"Just now, what we heard was the scream of that creature being reborn. This scream resounded through the stars and spread far into the void."
"A warning," Zeratul said to Augustus.
"The trajectories of the stars are just stones thrown by Xel'Naga. The fog will eventually dissipate, and in the darkness, all the truth will be revealed.
"That doesn't sound good. What happened?" When Zeratul appeared, Raynor also looked over.
"Stop talking nonsense, Zeratul, you'd better tell me in one damn sentence what that inexplicable thing is about?" he said.