"Joey, five platters of fried chicken. And a Hardman's Fries," said the cowboy who had just walked into the bar. "Two bottles of Flat Earth Island porter."
The cowboy sported a neatly trimmed mustache and a full gray beard. His face was sharp-edged, weathered by wind and time, rough to the point of near abrasion. A scar nearly 8 cm long ran from the corner of his right eye, almost ruining what might have once been a handsome face. He didn't look young anymore. He looked like the kind of man who'd grown up hard on Mar Sara.
"Augustus, still the same as ever."
Raynor handed the bottle to Augustus, watching him down the rest of the whiskey in several long gulps before handing the bottle back without a word.
"You're starting to look the part of a cowboy now—only problem is, Mar Sara ain't got no cows."
When the bar owner brought over the trays piled high with food, Augustus sat down beside Raynor. He dragged over a metal chair with a backrest, slouched into it, and tucked his chin low, face hidden beneath the brim of his hat.
"What the hell happened to you?"
Raynor looked like a mess himself—face smeared with dust, bangs left long and unkempt to cover his eyes—but it wasn't much of a disguise. To a seasoned Confederate Marshal with proper scanning gear, it wouldn't fool anyone for long.
Fortunately, Raynor wasn't particularly famous. As far as the Confederacy knew, he was just a minor figure within the rebellion. Thanks to Augustus's dazzling performance in the Marine Corps, people like Raynor had remained in the shadows, eclipsed by his brilliance. As a low-level grunt, Raynor's name didn't even qualify for the top ten on the wanted list.
Even Arcturus Mengsk, who hadn't been involved in the war for Korhal's independence at all, had made it into the top twenty. It just went to show that the Confederacy still considered a retired colonel a greater threat than a mere corporal from the Marine Corps.
"The almighty Umojan Agent Disguise Technique."
Augustus leaned back in his chair, staring at the food on his plate without much appetite.
"This is a morph-mask. Nanotech. Uses optical projection to replicate someone else's appearance. It can fool the human eye—and most holographic scanning devices too."
Compared to the Terran Confederacy and the Kel-Morian Combine, Umoja lacked vast colonies and mining worlds. For a long time, its truly democratic government had been seen by both the Confederacy and the Combine as weak. But this planet had long managed to remain outside of Confederate control thanks to a lucrative economy and cutting-edge technology far more advanced than that of most other planets. By selling high-precision mining equipment to the Kel-Morians, Umoja made a killing.
"Get me one of those too," Raynor said, grabbing a tray of fried chicken and tearing into it.
"What kind do you want?" Augustus asked.
"My recommendation?"
A large man strode in, taller than Augustus by a head. He wore only a short-sleeved shirt, his muscular arms sunburnt crimson under Mar Sara's brutal sun. Pale purple tattoos coiled along his skin, giving him a fierce, almost violent presence.
"Crossdressing. Safest bet."
"In the noble circles of Tarsonis, it's considered an art form," he continued, "Just like how those fat-faced aristocrats love to doll up their boy toys—keeping catamites is all the rage."
"Then I say you go first, Tychus," Raynor replied dryly, unmoved.
"I think it's hilarious."
Tychus grinned like a villain, the wrinkles on his face spreading open like the scales of a dragon.
"We're wanted men now. We've got to be careful. From now on, the entire Terran Confederacy's fleet will be scouring the stars, hunting us down, chasing even the faintest trace."
"Fleets like Edmund Duke's Alpha Squadron—there's at least ten of those in the Confederacy. And once they finish swallowing up the Kel-Morian mining worlds and industrial cities, they'll build even more ships!"
"Let them come, then," Raynor scoffed.
"I heard Duke's Alpha Squadron chased Jackson's Revenge, the battlecruiser, all the way past the Koprulu sector, into the systems of the Perseus Arm."
"Captain Jackson had a more vivid way of putting it," Tychus said with a hearty chuckle.
"Duke was locked onto that tracker signal like a pig chasing an apple."
"It wasn't until the recall order came from Tarsonis for all fleet units that Duke realized something was off," he continued, animated.
"But even then, he still didn't figure out he wasn't chasing us."
"Duke had a bit of bad blood with the pirates aboard Jackson's Revenge, which is why they were so eager to earn that commission. To sell it even better, they faked communications between the Norad and the Hyperion. At one point, Jackson nearly dragged Alpha Squadron into the gravity well of a newborn neutron star. If Duke's men hadn't had a sliver of sense left, they'd all be ash by now."
"Hahahaha—" Raynor burst into laughter, unable to contain his delight. He had always despised Duke's arrogance and condescension.
But the laughter died quickly.
Raynor realized that even Tychus wasn't smiling, and he should've known from the start that Augustus had been sullen all along.
"Josephine is dead."
After a single breath of silence, Tychus said it softly. His face didn't show much sorrow—Tychus never seemed the type to shed tears for the dead, even though he'd often caroused with Harnack and Josephine in the past.
"Maybe he didn't suffer much. At the kind of heat that melts neosteel, death comes in an instant."
Raynor fell silent.
He thought back to the photo they'd taken on Turaxis.
Now, another face was missing from it.
"Was Josephine buried back home?" he asked.
"No. The survivors never found a body. Every carbon atom in his body was consumed in the molten debris of several megatonnes of fortress and metal rock. Canis, one of Korhal's moons, is his grave now."
Tychus shook his head.
"Someone put up a monument for everyone who died there."
"I wish I could see him again."
Raynor's eyes reddened, but no tears fell.
"What happened to Korhal?"
"One of us was always going to go first. Everyone knew this wasn't some game of house."
Tychus walked straight over to Joeyray's liquor shelf and grabbed a few bottles.
"Put it on Jim's tab," he said to the bartender.
"You mean Korhal?" Tychus said.
"Actually, things there turned out a bit better than we originally thought. Most areas weren't hit by the nukes. Let's just say… the people of Korhal might still have a shot at rebuilding someday."
"Harnack, Lundstein, and Lisa are still alive. They're working in Umoja now, helping lead the effort to build a new city and a new government. Kydd and the others took off with the twenty colony ships headed in different directions. No one knows what those fleets will run into out there."
Augustus hadn't said a word through it all.
He simply stared out the window, watching Mar Sara's searing winds sweep rust-colored grit into the air, swirling up and down in ceaseless motion. His cold gray eyes reflected that crimson world outside. Aside from the cloaked Ghost operative sitting across from him, no one could have guessed what he was thinking.
At last, Augustus seemed to stir again.
He picked up a perfectly crisp fry and held it forward.
[Crunch—crunch—crunch]
In the blink of an eye, the fry vanished—gone so fast it might as well have disappeared into thin air. Then came the second, then the third—until the plate in front of Augustus had been completely cleared.
Finally, a faint smile crept onto his face.
But it vanished just as quickly.
Now, Augustus bore the lives of nearly 90,000 revolutionaries on his shoulders. Fourteen battlecruisers were docked behind a solid gas giant in the Sara system—but most of them were badly damaged and in desperate need of resources for repairs. Without them, they'd be nothing more than drifting heaps of steel, destined for the scrapfields of space.
Augustus pulled his hand back and took a silk handkerchief from his pocket, wiping the grease from his fingers.
"It's time to move," he said to Raynor and Tychus.
"There's still a lot to do before we drain Mar Sara's crystal mines and vespene fields dry."
He pushed open the heavy iron shutter of Joeyray's Bar.
A blast of rust-colored windstorm sand surged into his boots. His black vest quickly gathered a fine coat of gritty red dust.
In front of him, a massive hauler rumbled past the bar's entrance. Rebels in disguise, dressed as prospectors, rode off in scouts and Vultures toward the horizon. Soldiers with wide-brimmed hats and red bandanas saluted as Augustus passed by.
This was a world far removed from Tarsonis.
Mar Sara might not be a place fit for human habitation—but its underground held wealth beyond measure.
"In the end, we followed your brother's path," Tychus said as he stepped up behind Augustus.
"Turns out, money talks. The people here welcome us. Mar Sara's even more hopeless than Korhal—every region is full of rebels and criminals. But there's only a few million of them total—barely enough to make a ripple."
"We'll build a base here," Augustus said.
"Use it to train new recruits."
"Sounds good," Raynor replied, standing to Augustus's left.
"The colonial governor of Mar Sara just made a nice little profit recently," Tychus added, slapping Raynor on the shoulder.
"He's going to be too busy dealing with pregnant mistresses to care what we're up to. A few gold diggers rushing in from Agria barely make a splash on the beach."
"Corruption never looked so damn comfortable."
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