There were five Terrazine sanctuaries located close to one another at the planned strike zone. Thick streams of violet gas were gushing out from fissures in the ground, the dense vapors so heavy they obscured the sky. The jungle under the Terrazine's shroud was sparse and lifeless—its bushes and trees wilted and drooping, clear evidence that Terrazine was toxic to surface vegetation.
A squadron of bombers—APOD transport ships converted for bombardment—was sweeping over the Terrazine sanctuaries. The formation, consisting of more than forty-five bombers, was releasing potent herbicides over the area, causing the once-lush jungle to wither rapidly. The vibrant green canopy gradually turned sickly yellow.
This high-strength defoliant was mainly used to clear open ground in heavily vegetated terrain, even though it inflicted almost permanent damage to the contaminated soil. In the later stages of the Guild Wars, neither the Kel-Morian Combine nor the Terran Confederacy had shown any hesitation in devastating the environment.
Duke's Alpha Squadron took the lead. Firebats in white power armor and flamethrower troopers carrying only fuel tanks and flamers formed the front line. More than twenty thousand Alpha Squadron soldiers were spread out across over a dozen square miles of terrain.
In the rear, Warfield's artillery units had already opened fire. They had no need to hold back for the sake of the Tal'darim Protoss sanctuaries. The thunderous barrage engulfed those ancient alien structures in explosions. The Terrazine geysers were bombarded relentlessly; their high-energy gas composition—akin to volatile fuel—ignited instantly, and the Tal'darim sanctuaries were soon consumed by a sea of fire.
"These are all cultural relics," Augustus said with a trace of regret. "If we sold them to the Umojans, they'd probably fetch a good price."
"The Tal'darim Protoss haven't shown any response," Kerrigan said as she stared at the main screen.
"You're too impatient," Augustus replied—just as one of the Revolutionary Army's reconnaissance craft hovering in the sky captured movement below: the figures of Tal'darim ground troops.
Thousands of Tal'darim Protoss warriors suddenly appeared on the Alpha Squadron's right and left flanks. They materialized from phase-warp fields, moving swiftly and fluidly through the withering jungle. Their powerful legs allowed them to run at speeds far beyond any human capability.
These Tal'darim warriors wore dark black armor draped with blood-red cloaks or mantles. Their suits bristled with thornlike spikes and upright blades, decorated with the fangs and claws of massive beasts. Some even had the helmets of Revolutionary Army soldiers hanging from their armor as trophies of war.
The armor and helmets of the Tal'darim Protoss warriors were not uniform in design. Many wore conical helmets with pointed crests. Some wielded twin crimson psionic blades along their forearms, while others brandished long-handled, double-edged reaping scythes or crimson crystal spears.
Amid the ranks of these Tal'darim warriors stood massive spider-like mechs with two pairs of mechanical legs. Their flattened, disk-shaped bodies supported long limbs, and from them burst dense barrages of crimson phase-disruptor beams, weaving a deadly curtain of light.
Floating several meters above the ground were the unmistakable leaders of the formation—their bodies surrounded by thick crimson mist. Around them clustered numerous Tal'darim Protoss draped in little more than rags, nearly naked, who seemed to be the slaves of their own kind.
...
From the moment the Tal'darim ground forces emerged within the sub-warp field to the instant Alpha Squadron opened fire, only a few seconds had passed—no longer than the time it took for a Marine to draw and chamber his weapon, or for a Tal'darim warrior to ignite his psionic blade.
On Bel'Shir, amid withering jungles and dying trees, the battlefield of Terrans and Tal'darim Protoss unfolded. The electromagnetic rifles and gauss nailguns in the hands of Alpha Squadron infantry clattered sharply, while Firebats at the very front unleashed searing walls of plasma fire to shroud the line in blazing smoke.
Goliath combat walkers and Arclite Tanks with deployed stabilizers stood interspersed between Alpha Squadron's battalions, providing sustained fire support for their infantry comrades.
Meanwhile, the Tal'darim warriors advanced through the storm of bullets. The padded reinforced greaves of their power armor allowed those frenzied Protoss to charge with phantom speed, crashing into the enemy ranks with overwhelming momentum.
Edmund Duke's Alpha Squadron—over twenty thousand soldiers—was arrayed along a front roughly fifteen miles wide. Behind them stood more than a dozen artillery battalions and over six thousand elite mercenaries from the Kel-Morian Iron Hammer Security Company.
Compared with Alpha Squadron's bright white power armor and its golden eagle insignias, the Iron Hammer Company's armor was far more subdued—its primary color a matte black, accented by silver-gray angular lines.
Every one of those mercenaries had signed confidentiality agreements, swearing not to speak of what they witnessed today for five years. Yet even so, the news that alien civilizations existed beyond the Koprulu Sector was bound to spread sooner or later. Even the most world-weary individuals couldn't help but feel a deep curiosity toward such mysterious extraterrestrials—especially when those beings bore hostility toward humanity.
In truth, the Terran Confederacy and other human governments had discovered and named these alien species far earlier than the publicly known year of 2497.
After the Revolutionary Army artillery completed their first targeting adjustments, they opened fire on the coordinates where Tal'darim units had first been reported. A dense barrage immediately blanketed several square miles ahead of Alpha Squadron's position. Huge columns of dirt, withered vegetation, and shrapnel erupted skyward, tearing open the very surface of the ground.
Yet just as the artillery commander prepared for a second volley, reports arrived that the Tal'darim Protoss had already engaged Alpha Squadron in close combat. The batteries promptly shifted their aim to the Tal'darim rear lines to avoid friendly fire.
From the thick smoke raised by the bombardment, the Tal'darim warriors emerged—now much closer to the Terran infantry still firing. Such a concentration of shells would have shredded Terran power armor and annihilated any known human ground force, yet the Protoss units appeared to have suffered few casualties, if any at all.
The plasma shields covering their bodies still shimmered with a cold, spectral light—like solid ice under Bel'Shir's fragmented sunlight. The Protoss' methods of warfare differed greatly from the Terrans', who relied on ballistic and kinetic weapons. The Protoss rarely used projectile arms, favoring instead their beam-based psionic weaponry.
Even so, Protoss warriors still upheld the traditions of their tribal era, continuing to fight with blades and spears—though their stone weapons had long been replaced with psionic ones. Perhaps they believed that the clash of blades best embodied a warrior's worth. But that did not mean the Protoss—least of all the cruel and fanatical Tal'darim—were incapable of unleashing overwhelming firepower to annihilate their enemies.
Behind the Tal'darim front line, nearly a thousand Tal'darim Dragoons advanced across the cratered battlefield, their flat, four-legged exo-frames moving like giant crabs of the deep sea. Their long, jointed mechanical legs traversed shell-torn trenches and ravines as if they were level ground.
Whenever the crimson energy shells from the Dragoons' phase-disruptor cannons landed within Alpha Squadron's formation, whether they struck a Marine or a heavily armored Firebat, the target instantly melted—or shattered apart like crushed jelly.
As the Tal'darim warriors charged forward, their movements were as swift and powerful as antelopes. Their indestructible plasma shields repelled every bullet, shell fragment, and even laser beam. The psionic blades in their hands trailed arcs of crimson light like leaping flames.
Those Tal'darim wielding blood-red blades plunged through the storm of Alpha Squadron's concentrated fire, and in the blink of an eye, the Terran lines erupted in blood and torn flesh. The psionic blades of the Tal'darim Protoss could slice through powered armor with only a few swings.
The battlefield roared with explosions, and light from blades and beams intertwined.
Even the Tal'darim themselves were surprised by Alpha Squadron's morale—how it never seemed to collapse or retreat. The soldiers, conditioned through resocialization, would not break even if only one of them remained. Their combat awareness was nearly mechanical—no retreat, fight to the death.
The first Tal'darim assault inflicted massive casualties on Alpha Squadron—not to mention the hovering Tal'darim leaders above the field, who unleashed crimson psionic chains that swept across the battlefield with devastating force.
The Protoss had refined the use of psionics to its absolute peak. Each individual's psionic power far surpassed that of any human psionic—save for Sarah Kerrigan herself. Throughout the entire Koprulu Sector, there were only between one and ten thousand human psionics, while among the Tal'darim Protoss, such beings were everywhere. If psionic potential represented the height of a species' evolution, then the Protoss had undoubtedly reached an extraordinary level.
Terrifying psionic arcs easily tore through powered armor. Those caught at the center of a psionic chain were dried out like crabs roasted in an oven, dying in hideous agony.
Yet Duke's Alpha Squadron was without question an elite force. They soon stabilized their line and counterattacked, striking the enemy hard with EMP and anti-psionic weaponry.
While the Tal'darim warriors slaughtered freely with their advanced plasma shields and psionic blades, their numbers were ultimately too few. Including the Dragoon units stationed in the rear, the Tal'darim forces on the field numbered fewer than five thousand.
Meanwhile, Warfield's Marine Corps reinforced Alpha Squadron's flanks from the rear, while Raynor's Raiders swept around to the Tal'darim left, placing immense pressure on the Dragoon units positioned behind their lines.
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