The Norad III, where Edmund Duke was located, moved a bit farther away so that this unknown massive fleet would not mark it as a target.
The hundreds of cameras aboard the Norad III still locked tightly onto the golden fleet lingering in the high-altitude orbit above Chau Sara. Whether it was the Alpha Squadron officers on the bridge issuing orders or the technicians running back and forth, everyone unanimously held their breath as they stared at all of this.
Once, Terrans had believed they were the only intelligent beings in the universe; even the Zerg, compared with Terrans, were undoubtedly seen as beasts. Yet the truth was that strictly arrayed armies and grand fleets did not belong to Terrans alone. An elder race that had entered the starship era far earlier than Terrans was now unleashing its wrath upon the Sara system.
A giant had awakened, and he had stepped into a children's playground.
"Energy output levels sensed by the Norad III probe are continuously increasing," a technical officer said.
"Tell me what that means."
Duke clasped his hands behind the deep gray cape of his military greatcoat, his eyes narrowing into a venomous triangular slant. No one knew what this rough, arrogant Tarsonis noble was thinking.
"Their main cannon is about to fire," the technical officer replied.
"For God's sake, what the hell is wrong with these damn aliens?"
Duke roared, spitting out the crude slang of a fringe-sector yokel.
"I'll bet anything—this has the damned pointy-heads of the Tal'darim Protoss written all over it. They must be involved."
If not for the overwhelming difference in strength between the two sides, with Duke's usual style he would likely already have charged in with his fleet. This old Tarsonis noble despised aliens from the bottom of his heart. In his view, any non-Terran creature ought to be executed on the spot—whether they supposedly possessed intelligence or emotion.
Moreover, Marshal Augustus Mengsk of the Revolutionary Army was closely watching both the Norad III and everything happening in the Sara system from the central command room of the fortress. Just as some within the Revolutionary Army often said, Duke was nothing more than a gorilla in King Arthur's court, and King Arthur would keep a tight leash on his pet.
During Duke's cursing, even though the Norad III was already quite far from Chau Sara, almost at the edge of the system, the white-hot, intensely bright light still illuminated the entire bridge of the battlecruiser in an instant, dyeing the world in the soldiers' eyes pure white.
That blinding light lasted for three to four seconds before finally fading. At this moment, the Norad III, the command rooms at all levels within the Revolutionary Army fortress, and the main screens aboard every Terran warship throughout the Sara system were all synchronously recording this overwhelmingly shocking scene.
In the high orbit above Chau Sara, the cylindrical golden warships were unleashing purifying fire upon the planet. One massive white beam after another shot straight toward the world glowing with a cyan hue, and bright orange spots instantly appeared on the planetary surface—each one rapidly expanding like an oil film spreading across water.
At the strike points, multicolored radiance swirled within the white cloud layer. These beautiful vortices spun and stretched for thousands of miles; they were clearly visible from space, resembling the Great Red Spot on Jupiter. Waves of color rippled out from dozens of impact points, quickly spreading across the entire planetary surface. In the dazed eyes of all watching, the dazzling colors and orange-red bursts completely blotted out the planet's original shade.
As a terrestrial planet, Chau Sara now shone hundreds of times brighter than before. What appeared on the main screens was like a dying star beginning its long transformation into a searing white dwarf—a melting, multicolored sphere. Flickering, uneven orange-red patches covered the world's entire surface, with several major strike points shining especially intensely.
The Protoss main cannon's bombardment destroyed at least eighty percent of Chau Sara's atmosphere. Torrents of heat churned the scalding air, forming hurricanes and storms that swept across the entire planet.
As the main cannon's beams swept over everything on the surface, mountain ranges coated in thick creep mats were erased forever in an instant. All of the planet's oceans were boiled away in a short time, and immense volumes of steam escaped the planet's gravity, drifting into space. On Norad III's main screen, Chau Sara looked like an orange spherical balloon torn open, releasing its flood of water vapor.
The strikes covered every angle with no blind spots and penetrated to a depth of 6–15 meters. At the centers of the impact points, the strike depth commonly exceeded one hundred fifty meters.
One especially powerful main cannon beam from a Protoss carrier even punched through the crust itself. Thick, scorching red magma surged up from beneath, and every volcano erupted with molten rock and towering plumes of smoke. This once verdant and beautiful world had now become a molten planet with red seas of flowing lava on the ground and terrifying hurricanes rampaging through the sky.
At the latitude where Chau Sara was about to turn toward its star to welcome the coming dawn, everything had already transformed into a burning crimson hell. The horizon and sky were shrouded in red light, flickering like a continuous scarlet aurora.
Under such a wide-scale orbital bombardment, it was impossible for any living creature on Chau Sara to survive; even the terrifying Zerg burned fiercely in the flames and turned to ash.
Only when Chau Sara had completely become a sphere seemingly engulfed in fire did the Protoss fleet finally cease its bombardment.
Chau Sara, a beautiful planet that had once nurtured countless wondrous lifeforms, would slowly cool in the time to come and gradually turn into a black crystalline body with a surface entirely composed of silicates.
The planet had died completely.
The bridge of the Norad III fell utterly silent. They had never witnessed anything like this—watching an entire planet perish before their very eyes. Even the extremely arrogant and conceited Duke was stunned speechless, repeatedly tugging at and releasing his collar in his habitual gesture.
It was obvious that Terrans were utterly incapable of achieving such destructive power. Even Korhal IV, which had endured a nuclear strike, had only seen its buildings and forests cleared by Apocalypse-class warheads. At the intersections of the blasts, quite a number of people and animals had still survived by sheer luck.
Inside the Revolutionary Army fortress, Augustus Mengsk had likewise witnessed everything in person through the perspective of the Norad III. He appeared very calm, as if he had long foreseen what was about to happen.
Augustus simply held the deeply shaken Sarah Kerrigan in his arms, gently stroking her back.
"It's all right, my dear. We've already rescued the people of Chau Sara."
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