Agria's atmosphere was once a breathtaking azure blue—
This agricultural colony's sky had been as pure as polished glass, washed clean by sunlight. When starlight passed through the cloud cover, it would cast a soft golden hue along the horizon.
But now, that sky had been utterly defiled by the shadow of the swarm.
In low orbit, what seemed like countless hive ships loomed like rotting fruit. Their bloated husks pulsed with thick, veiny tissue, ejecting spore sacs ceaselessly toward the surface.
These viscous organic pods fell like torrential rain, trailing long green contrails as they pierced the atmosphere.
What was even more horrifying were the floating debris fields: the escort fleet had been torn apart, the twisted plating of warships revealed mangled corridors, and now-frozen corpses drifted within open hulls.
Wreckage from orbital stations slowly rotated in silence, their hulls pocked with acid burns, resembling termite-ridden wood.
Looking to the planet below, Agria had once been a model of humanity's agrarian civilization.
Vast plains undulated with golden wheat under seasonal winds, and automated harvesters roamed the fields like steel titans.
Around sapphire lakes stood ranches where gene-modified livestock grazed lazily within electronic fences. Hillsides bore tidy orchards, with drones flitting among vines to monitor ripeness.
Though the towns on the colony weren't large, they were full of life.
Residences and shops circled central plazas where children laughed beside fountains. Markets smelled of fresh bread. Holographic billboards displayed crop prices in loops. Each neighborhood had automated medical stations and schools. In the evening, the sound of symphonies from public theaters filled the streets.
Now, this pastoral tableau was being torn to shreds by the swarm.
Zooming in on a town at the periphery—
This had once been Agria's famed lavender region. Purple flowers should have bloomed along every street, but now, the creeping infestation carpeted everything.
The buildings' surfaces were smothered in viscous organic matter. Veins pulsed rhythmically across the living carpet, pumping nutrients to distant sections.
Wrecks of vehicles melted by acid littered the roads, their exposed circuitry like dissected metal corpses.
Most chilling of all—there wasn't a single human body in sight. The victims had already been broken down into nutrient slurry, even their bones chewed and absorbed by the swarm.
The town square's once-cheerful fountain had become a spawning pool, its murky fluid swirling with immature zergling embryos.
At the school, the holographic blackboard was frozen on the last biology lesson, its DNA model projection shattered by a patrolling hydralisk.
In the hospital, mechanical arms still reached out to deliver IVs—but now those limbs were cocooned in webbed fungal strands.
From synchronous orbit, the entire continent resembled a breeding farm.
Northern wheat fields were stained purple by creep. Unharvested crops grew twisted beneath sticky membranes.
Inside fenced-in pastures, the mutated remains of livestock melted like wax sculptures. Irrigation lines no longer ran with water, but digestive fluids secreted by the swarm.
Towns and villages already fallen lay cloaked in acidic mist, the remnants of anti-air towers standing like tombstones pointed skyward—where trails of smoke still lingered from the last transport ships that never made it.
In what used to be the prosperous capital district, a hundred-meter-tall spire of organic material had risen from the infestation, spewing spores into the atmosphere.
Those spores would spread through the stratosphere, slowly transforming Agria's air into a toxic fog suitable only for the swarm.
At the base of the spire, countless assimilated humans were being dragged by drones into hatcheries. Hollow-eyed, their sockets glowed with the swarm's eerie light. The veins under their skin bulged, now repurposed as nutrient delivery tubes.
On the outskirts of what few surviving cities remained, convoys of heavy transports rumbled across shattered highways.
Their metal hulls were scorched and pitted by acid. Bulletproof glass had long been replaced with welded steel. The cargo bays were crammed with civilians fleeing overrun zones.
Escorting them were security troops in gray-and-white CMC power armor, the colony's insignia smeared with blood on their chest plates.
Their joints groaned from overuse, ammunition warnings flashed relentlessly on HUDs inside their helmets.
Zerg moved through the crop fields on either side of the road, shrieking intermittently.
"Contact left!"
A raspy voice rang through the comms.
Ri~tak-tak—!
Several armored vehicles opened fire in unison, their railguns blasting oncoming hydralisks into bloody chunks.
But more zerglings burst from the dust clouds. Some leapt straight onto the convoy's rearguard.
BOOM—!!
A soldier was dragged down by several zerglings. Just before he fell, he triggered a grenade—its fireball buying a fleeting moment for the others.
"Don't stop! Keep moving!"
The commander's roar echoed through the radio.
At the front, an armored bulldozer crushed through barricades, the rumble of shattered carapace rising beneath its treads.
Another transport at the rear was overturned by a lurker erupting from beneath the road. The civilians inside were swarmed before they could even scream.
No one looked back—stopping meant death.
From above, the swarm was steadily devouring every pocket of human resistance.
More than sixty thousand civilians remained trapped within a shrinking defensive perimeter, the skies and the ground both sealed by the zerg.
In a northern tourist town, thousands of people crowded inside a nuclear-grade underground shelter.
Ventilation systems had failed long ago. The stifling air reeked of sweat and blood.
On the plains outside, the infestation writhed like a living thing. Hundreds of ultralisks paced in the distance, their glossy armor gleaming in the sun. Any breakout attempt across open ground would be torn to shreds in seconds.
Above an industrial coastal city, flying mantises swirled like black clouds.
Any transport aircraft that tried to launch was shot down within seconds, burning wreckage crashing into the sea and raising clouds of noxious steam.
With such total envelopment, every proposed evacuation plan seemed doomed from the start.
The southern mining zones might've offered a tunnel escape route—but surveillance footage showed the mine shafts were already crawling with hatchery sacs.
A cargo train lay derailed across the tracks, its exterior clawed and shredded. The station's automated announcements still droned emergency instructions no one was around to hear.
And then—
"Get inside! Seal the door!"
In the western quadrant of a besieged city, five CMC-armored security soldiers held a last line at a shelter entrance.
Behind them, over a hundred civilians stumbled through the hydraulic doors. One heavy soldier braced himself against the frame, using his body to hold it open for as long as possible.
As another wave of zerglings charged, their remaining ammo finally ran dry. The guards had no choice but to fight with combat knives and armored fists.
Unlike the Dominion troops who had abandoned Agria, these security forces fought to the end because they were locals.
When the Dominion fled, and their pleas for help went unanswered, they shouldered the burden of self-defense.
One guard, pierced through the chest by a bone spike, still clutched a zergling's throat until a scythe-claw took off his head.
Another, his armor joints corroded by acid, collapsed to his knees and manually detonated explosives planted in the corridor.
BOOM. BOOOM—!!!
The explosion flipped the entire entrance. Pillars of flame lit the acidic mist above.
The alloy door sealed behind them, now a molten block. The last thing survivors heard was the swarm shrieking as it burned.
Inside, the shelter was heavy with heat and stink—sweat, blood, even excrement.
The power grid had failed. Only a few red emergency lights blinked overhead, casting people's terrified faces in ghostly hues.
Each flicker twisted shadows on the walls, as though something monstrous crawled just out of sight.
At first, people tried to stay calm.
Some prayed. Some held their children. Others tried to dress wounds with torn clothing.
But over time, fear began to gnaw at them all.
"We're done for… we're never making it out."
A middle-aged man curled up in a corner, eyes hollow, muttering.
His voice was quiet, but in the stillness, it rang like a bell.
"We should've fought our way out with the guards!" another yelled, pounding the floor with rage and regret. "At least we'd have died fighting!"
The children responded in the only way they could.
A little girl clung to her mother's coat, silent tears streaming down her cheeks, sobbing softly.
The mother stroked her hair mechanically, lips trembling, unable to speak—because even she no longer believed there was hope.
Despair spread like plague.
Some wept quietly. Others stared at the ceiling, numb, already accepting the end.
The blast-sealed door had bought them time—but also sealed them in a steel tomb.
Death was inevitable. Either by thirst and starvation… or when the swarm finally clawed through the walls.
Just when it felt like the air would crush them—
Boom. Boom. Boom.
A deep, rhythmic rumbling echoed from above.
At first, many dismissed it as hallucination—perhaps distant explosions, or the ringing in their ears.
But the tremors grew stronger. The ground quivered.
Dust began to fall from the ceiling, landing on people's heads and shoulders.
"What… is that?"
A voice trembled, with a sliver of hope.
"It's the zerg—they're digging in!" someone else screamed, shrinking back in terror.
But the rhythm changed.
It wasn't the chaotic digging of zerg.
It was mechanical. Deliberate.
Then, a thunderous crash shook the entire shelter. The ceiling groaned like it had been struck by a giant.
The lights flickered—then went out.
In total darkness, people held their breath.
Fear and confusion warred in their chests.
And then—
BOOM!!!
A blinding light tore through the dark.
The ceiling was ripped open by some colossal force. Fresh air rushed in, tinged with smoke and ozone.
Instinctively, people raised their hands against the light—and through it, they saw towering silhouettes of metal giants.
Larger, more imposing than any CMC suit—these power-armored titans stood like statues of steel. The insignia on their shoulder plates gleamed coldly in the sun.
"Are—are those rescuers?!"
A soot-streaked man was the first to speak, his raspy voice quivering with disbelief.
His words spread through the crowd like ripples in a still pond.
Despair finally found a crack.
Some broke into sobs. Others fell to their knees in prayer. Many surged forward, straining to glimpse the giants above.
Thump. Thump.
Each footstep made the ground tremble.
Three armored giants jumped down through the breach, their grav-magnetic boots cracking the floor into spiderwebs.
As the dust cleared, the rescuers were finally revealed—
Each warrior stood over 2.5 meters tall, clad head to toe in dark green Titan power armor.
Their breastplates bore the roaring "Fire Dragon" emblem etched in silver.
Visors glowed red. Their breath vents hissed steam into the cold air.
Suddenly, the crowd fell silent.
These figures radiated such oppressive presence—they were not Dominion soldiers. Nor were they local security.
A child instinctively clutched his mother tighter. She, in turn, covered his mouth, terrified to make a sound.
"Maintain order."
The lead warrior—no, the lead Flame Lizard—spoke.
His voice, distorted through a vox-amplifier, echoed with metallic weight through the shelter.
He raised his gauntleted hand and motioned downward.
"All civilians will evacuate via lift. No panic. No fear. We are here to save you."
A metal-framed lift slowly descended through the breach.
The first civilians, trembling, stepped aboard—and saw what lay above.
The streets, once choked with infestation, were now covered in scorched craters. Zerg remains burned in plasma fire.
BANG—BANG!!
Twenty Flame Lizards held a circular perimeter. Their bolters roared nonstop.
Further away, three mechs bathed the remaining swarm in flame, superheated jets vaporizing their carapaces.
Transport ships ignited their engines nearby. In the glow of plasma thrust, the last image many saw was—
Those "few" steel giants forming into assault formation—marching toward the densest part of the swarm.
And the fire of their bolters, like beacons in the dark, became the last hope of a dying world.
(End of Chapter)
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