Zerglings, Hydralisks, Ultralisks, and swarms of Defilers—their "limited brain capacity" could only sustain the most primitive desire for slaughter and bloodlust.
Sarah Kerrigan planted the bright-red banner of the Revolutionary Army into the crimson sandy soil of Mar Sara. With one hand, she reached behind her shoulder, grabbed the stock of her C-10 "Canister" shotgun, and drew it as if pulling a massive sword from her back; the momentum truly resembled someone swinging a greatsword.
With a crisp clack as she racked the shotgun, Kerrigan lifted her wild eyebrows. "Stand behind me, darling."
"I'm not thrilled to hear you say that." At the mention of Defilers, Augustus instantly furrowed his brow; in his impression, these gigantic scorpions were often associated with toxic mists and viral plagues.
Defilers were rare within their brood, and whenever they appeared in large numbers, it meant the Zerg were concentrating their attention on this battlefield. Humans who crossed paths with these monsters could be called some of the unluckiest people in the world.
While Augustus spoke, Corporal Faraday had already approached with more than a dozen members of the Marshal's Elite Guard.
"Go to the front line." Augustus took a C-14 electromagnetic rifle from Corporal Faraday's hands and walked toward the Revolutionary Army soldiers forming a defensive line behind the refugees. Clad in deep-red powered armor, the Revolutionary Army soldiers had already formed an indestructible battle line together with the Arclite Tanks and Goliath combat walkers behind them.
In front of the line, crimson sand and dust rose high into the air. From afar, it looked like an oncoming sandstorm stretching several miles long and more than a dozen miles wide. Within the swirling haze, the sharp fangs, claws, and mottled hides of alien creatures could vaguely be seen. They howled, producing harsh scraping sounds as their spines and carapaces rubbed together.
The rustling of the advancing Zerg sounded just like what Augustus used to hear in summer fields—low buzzing emitted by swarms of insects.
The Revolutionary Army's Arclite Tanks continued firing relentlessly at the advancing Zerg. The thunder of their cannons reverberated across the battlefield, and each shell exploded into clouds of sand, blood, and fragments of chitinous flesh and carapace.
When the swarm launched its assault, it was by no means without order; it was like an army advancing and retreating in good order. Zerglings and massive Ultralisks charged at the front, while Hydralisks and Defilers closely followed behind.
Because the swarm was simply too large, even if the Arclite Tank drivers did not take aim, every shot could still smash down on the Zerg's heads.
Even so, such casualties were utterly negligible for a swarm of that size. The eggs hidden in their underground hives and hatcheries could hatch into more Zerg at any time to make up for the losses; as long as the hive had not been destroyed, Araq, the cerebrate leading the Jormungand Brood, could continually summon its clan members.
"There have to be at least a hundred thousand of these Zerg. Jimmy, where are your people?" Augustus said over the command communications channel.
"The Raiders and I were just complaining about that—there are so damned many of these bugs." Raynor's reply came back over the channel at once, his voice mixed with the sound of howling wind; clearly, this Mar Sara cowboy was happily gunning his Vulture bike.
"In short, the more than two thousand Raiders and I are currently on the left and right flanks of the Zerg force in front of you. The Zerg are crawling out of those collapsed holes, and their underground network extends across all of Mar Sara," Raynor said. "We're trying to use fragmentation grenades to kill as many of the Zerg as possible, and then use explosives to seal those tunnels."
"Even though they'll soon break through to the surface again, this should at least buy us some time."
"Faster, cowboy—time waits for no one." Augustus sprinted along, occasionally helping up refugees who had fallen. Fortunately, the people of Mar Sara were far hardier than those of the Core Worlds; even after already having walked a considerable distance, they could still break into another run under the threat of death.
If Omega Squadron hadn't taken all of the Mar Sara people's weapons, they would long since have been fighting the invading Jormungand Brood to the death.
Amid such a crowd, hundreds and thousands of Revolutionary Army soldiers ran against the flow of people toward the direction of the Zerg attack, leaving the people with the sight of their broad backs one after another.
"I'm swift as the wind," Raynor said. "Haha, no need to rush me, Augustus; I'll take care of those bugs in no time."
Raynor's forces possessed the largest number of vehicles in the entire Revolutionary Army, including large quantities of Vultures, command vehicles, scout cars, and Kel-Morian light armored vehicles equipped with 12mm machine guns.
It was precisely Raynor's Raiders who undertook reconnaissance, harassment, and raiding duties throughout crisis-ridden Mar Sara. They always appeared at the most dangerous moment for some migrant convoy, successfully drove back the Zerg, and then vanished like a whirlwind, departing once their work was done.
Augustus could still spare the strength to run while speaking with Raynor. His long-trained body was no weaker than the strongest soldiers in the Revolutionary Army. By the time Augustus sensed he was approaching the defensive line, the massive Jormungand Brood was already very close.
Before Augustus, several rows of Revolutionary Army soldiers were raising their Gauss rifles, aiming at the Zerg vanguard drawing ever closer to the front line. The scene before him made Augustus recall the first time he had stepped onto a battlefield—only now the enemies he faced were no longer Kel-Morians, but an endless swarm.
Augustus felt as though he could hear the pounding heartbeats of these soldiers, see the cold sweat beading on their foreheads.
Fighting humans and engaging the Zerg were two entirely different things. These alien creatures matched every human imagination of grotesque and terrifying monstrosities. Once a person was knocked down by the Zerg, the hideous beasts would immediately tear the victim into pieces or devour them alive. If that was already a tragic way to die, infection was an even more horrifying end.
Because they would be fighting the Zerg, recruits in the Revolutionary Army's training camps were required—before graduation—to come into contact with Zerg corpses or live specimens. Only after overcoming their fear of the alien could they leave the camp, which, to some extent, extended the cycle from enlistment to actual combat.
The Terran Confederacy, however, did not need to consider this; when implanting combat techniques into the minds of resocialized soldiers, they could simultaneously add protocols targeted at the Zerg and the Protoss.
"Damn it… this blasted infestation." Kerrigan cursed under her breath, then raised her C-10 shotgun and opened the optical sight.
The first to open fire were the Goliath combat walkers. Their elevated cockpits allowed them to survey the entire battlefield, and their weapon systems automatically locked onto the oncoming Zerg, using the 25mm autocannons and missiles to blast the leaping Zerglings into mangled pulp of bullets, carapace, and flesh.
Chitin fragments flew everywhere, and the shrieks of alien creatures filled the air. The countless overlapping roars sounded as if tens of thousands of beasts from hell were bellowing at once.
"Open fire!"
Commanding this unit was a Lieutenant Colonel from Heaven's Devils' Second Squad, now a highly accomplished senior officer.
At the Lieutenant Colonel's order, the Revolutionary Army soldiers eagerly poured out bullets from their rifles. The dense firepower immediately cleared a large swath of the charging Zerglings; the magnetized slugs pierced the Zerglings' comparatively fragile carapaces and turned them into shredded lumps of blood and meat.
And even after taking dozens of rounds—even with their brains blown apart—the Zerglings could still sprint more than a dozen yards before collapsing headfirst onto the ground.
Between the Zerglings were the massive Ultralisks. Their enormous frames dwarfed human tanks and all mechs. At first glance, the Ultralisk's thick, pillar-like walking limbs and the pair of curved bone blades at its jaws resembled a mammoth from Earth, but the multiple pairs of crimson eyes, the drooping tendrils, and the dripping saliva made it impossible to associate them with any terrestrial mammal.
The types and numbers of Zerg appearing on Mar Sara far exceeded those on Chau Sara; the surface alone already harbored more than one hundred million.
Ultralisks—these monsters standing several dozen feet tall—could practically ignore human Gauss rifle fire thanks to the heavy carapaces on their backs. Even the autocannons of Goliath combat walkers and the guns of Wraith fighters were little more than an itch to them.
Every moment, Zerg fell beneath human shells and bullets, but more Zerg immediately pounced forward. When the foremost Zerg entered within fifty yards, Revolutionary Army soldiers began throwing electromagnetic grenades. With the assistance of the powered armor's servo systems, the distances they could throw were even greater.
Ever since the Morian campaign, the Revolutionary Army had suffered no shortage of bullets or grenades—so much so that they could toss out entire crates of grenades at once. The blue electric pulses released by the electromagnetic grenades instantly swallowed the Zerg at the front, blasting them into heaps of mangled flesh.
But at the same time, more Zerglings leapt out from the charred corpses, and the Hydralisks had already entered their attack range. Their arched spines immediately launched deadly spines coated in green acid. These sharp spines pierced through the front-line Revolutionary Army armor in an instant and nailed through their flesh.
Fighting the Zerg on an open plain was almost equivalent to seeking death, but at this moment the Revolutionary Army was already the only barrier between the people and the Zerg.
In the past, Augustus would never have chosen to fight the Zerg here under any circumstances, but he could not allow hundreds of thousands of Mar Sara citizens to be slaughtered.
Standing side by side with these soldiers, Augustus could also feel this sense of despair. Human weapons were not incapable of piercing Zerg carapaces—automatic weapons could even injure the shrieking little Zerglings—but the problem was that the swarm's numbers were simply far too great.
Only a few minutes passed from their appearance to close combat with the Revolutionary Army. After suffering tens of thousands of casualties, the surging Zerg quickly charged through the bombardment and reached the soldiers' defensive line. Countless screaming Zerglings pounced onto the soldiers' armor and tore them to pieces.
When a massive Ultralisk crashed into the middle of the Revolutionary Army's line, the troops began to fall back step by step. Its head swung the massive "tusks" left and right, and with each sweep it could fling aside more than a dozen soldiers in powered armor, crushing their armor as if it were flattening soda cans.
Wails sounded endlessly in the communications channel, and the noises of bones breaking and flesh being devoured never ceased.
Augustus could even see the sharp spines and protruding claws along the Zerglings' backs ahead, and the constant sizzling of Hydralisk spines piercing armor. As Augustus kept firing, even a helmet full of holes rolled across the ground and stopped at his feet.
Right in front of Augustus, a Hydralisk that had lunged to the front line used the bone scythe ejected from its forelimb to slice a young Korhal Revolutionary Army soldier cleanly in half.
Blood and flesh instantly sprayed out, and bright red blood splattered across Augustus's face.
Kerrigan fired a steady shot at the Hydralisk; the 25mm canister round penetrated through one of the creature's eyes and instantly took its life.
The Hydralisk's serpentine body toppled to the ground, and one of its forelimb ends continued forward, piercing into the chest of a Revolutionary Army soldier. The bone scythe tore through his torso and dragged out a stream of blood. And so, that soldier—who had just celebrated his twentieth birthday this year—fell to the ground "embracing" the Hydralisk.
"Hold the line. I am Marshal Augustus, and I am fighting alongside you." Augustus shouted through the communications channel to maintain the soldiers' morale. His words, to some extent, inspired the warriors facing the countless Zerg.
The moment they remembered they were fighting side by side with the greatest warrior in Terran history, boundless courage rose within them.
At this moment, retreat was without a doubt the most foolish decision, because humans could never outrun the Zerg. In the face of fear, pulling back would instantly turn into a catastrophic rout.
Just as this was about to become a bitter defeat, the Revolutionary Army's air force arrived in time.
More than a hundred bombers and Hellhound fighters—converted from APOD-33 transport aircraft—swept across at low altitude and dropped large quantities of incendiary bombs and pulse bombs onto the ground, creating a death zone of fire and charred corpses before the Revolutionary Army's line.
Augustus had long since called for air support, and when the defensive line was on the brink of collapse, the formation of bombers sweeping overhead cleared out massive numbers of Zerg on the ground, greatly relieving the pressure on the Revolutionary Army. At the same time, Raynor also brought good news: his Raiders had sealed the Jormungand Brood's tunnel entrances, and the swarm's assault slowed.
With the air support that followed, the Revolutionary Army barely held off the first wave of the swarm's attack. Only after sacrificing several hundred lives and losing two Goliath combat walkers did they manage to deal with the few Ultralisks that had broken into the defensive line.
A little over ten minutes after the clash erupted, the Jormungand Brood finally retreated. Before withdrawing, they had killed more than a thousand Revolutionary Army soldiers and severed the limbs of many more.
Corpses lay everywhere before Augustus. Some were human, some Zerg; shattered chitin and powered armor forged from new alloys and shaped ceramics were all coated in a thick layer of blood.
On the battlefield, only the Revolutionary Army's banner still fluttered in the wind—and even that once-bright red flag was now stained with blood and acid.
"Have the refugees all left?" The smell of blood made Augustus feel faint.
"The officers stationed on Mar Sara say they've already entered the city," Kerrigan said.
"Bring back the bodies of the fallen," Augustus ordered through the communications channel. "I will not allow them to be infected by the swarm and turned into monsters or walking corpses. I'm taking them home."
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