Facing the local residents crowding forward, Augustus always wore a smile. On the sun-scorched highway, he repeatedly stressed: "This is only a strategic redeployment. It won't be long before the Revolutionary Army returns to Mar Sara."
"Put away your flags and slogans, beware of those Confederacy police agents who could break into your homes at any moment. Justice and freedom will never arrive late."
Augustus wore neither powered armor nor his flashy Mar Sara cowboy outfit. For the first time before the public on Mar Sara, he appeared dressed in a dark gray uniform with an officer's greatcoat—though it had to be said, it was fairly hot attire.
This image had already become well known among Confederacy citizens on many worlds outside Mar Sara. The only difference was that Terran news outlets led by UNN would add a wide-brimmed space-pirate style cap above Augustus's head, then pile folds and shadows onto his coat and cape, and finally place wailing children and several corpses at his feet.
"I promise you, the Revolutionary Army will certainly return to Mar Sara," Augustus told the locals gathered around him before departure.
"When we come back, no matter what kind of enemy we must face, the Revolutionary Army will save you."
As he spoke, Augustus shook hands with community representatives, always smiling, embracing the people. Compared with his father who had mixed in the political arena, Augustus emphasized even more that he came from his people, that he was one of them, like a brother.
Augustus dared to wave his guards away and stand among the people. When he lifted a local's daughter in his arms, the sight of them laughing together was forever captured by Corporal Faraday's optical camera.
When he finished speaking, Augustus boarded his personal transport, leaving behind for the Mar Sara crowd that had come to see him off a broad figure of his back.
"This was quite a memorable farewell," Raynor murmured to him as Augustus bent to step into the transport's cabin.
Raynor's pregnant girlfriend Elizabeth and her family had already boarded the transport arranged for Revolutionary Army soldiers' families two days earlier and reached the Hyperion. Now he had nothing left to worry about.
"Maybe many years from now, the people here will still proudly tell outsiders the story of how they once stood side by side with the great leader of the Revolutionary Army, Augustus Mengsk."
"And of me, of you, and of all the Revolutionary Army soldiers."
"I can hardly believe I once served as sheriff here for a while—Mengsk, you never said I couldn't flash that badge around to bluff folks." Tychus followed right behind Augustus and Raynor onto the ship, his burly frame blocking most of the hatch.
"Where are we headed next?"
"Moria. The Kel-Morian Combine's homeworld," Augustus replied. "We have a business deal to discuss with the Kel-Morians."
"They've never been satisfied with the unequal treaty signed after the Guild Wars ended. They want to reclaim the rich mining worlds that originally belonged to them."
"I never thought there'd come a day we'd be doing business with the Kel-Morians," Raynor said, shaking his head. "We've both got plenty of each other's blood on our hands."
As the transport carrying Augustus lifted off, hundreds of transports rose from all over, heading toward the battlecruisers waiting in near orbit.
All the mining sites Augustus had established on Mar Sara were marked and then reburied. The convicts who had labored there for nearly half a year were finally released after long sessions of ideological reeducation, while those with countless crimes, whether deserving death or not, were all executed by firing squad.
The Revolutionary Army now had to withdraw. Four Confederacy Navy fleets led by Omega Squadron were about to arrive. Departing Mar Sara at this moment and leaving the Confederacy fleet striking at nothing was the wise move.
But this did not mean Augustus had completely given up Mar Sara. The Revolutionary Army still maintained 8 military bases hidden in mountains, deserts, and even the poles of the planet, with a total force of more than 12,000 men.
Thousands of Pan-Terran Revolutionary Party members also went underground, embedded in Mar Sara's cities and towns, continuing their propaganda work.
With such a solid foundation laid, Mar Sara's revolution would shift into guerrilla warfare waged by many small detachments.
...
Two weeks later, Revolutionary Army battlecruiser Hyperion, Exit A, standard gravity. Ship time 07:04.
This passageway linking the main mess with the bridge was one Augustus, Raynor, Tychus, and Harnack had been walking every day these past days, and the Ghost operative Sarah Kerrigan, shorter by more than a head than the rest of them, always silently followed along, her entire life revolving around Augustus, with seemingly no other interests or hobbies.
In this narrow corridor, barely wide enough for two Marines to pass, black pipes coiled like snakes could be seen everywhere, and every so often one of the ceiling lights would be flickering, but for Augustus it had long since become commonplace.
Once he had left Mar Sara and come aboard the battlecruiser, the things Augustus had to worry about were far fewer. When the fleet was in hyperspace travel, the crew had even less to do, the soldiers' daily training tasks reduced to scrubbing the decks and running more than ten miles around the lower decks.
On the battlecruiser, daily affairs and duty rosters were overseen by the master sergeant; with that off their hands, Augustus's lieutenants—Tychus and Harnack foremost—spent their days playing cards, the rest of the time just bragging and shooting the breeze, living no different than the ordinary soldiers in the crew quarters.
Augustus said nothing about it; after the Battle of Mar Sara, both officers and soldiers needed a period of relaxation.
"Mengsk, why didn't we bring Joey Ray's Bar aboard? I like the cocktails there." As Augustus led Raynor and the others down the corridor, Tychus was still griping about something.
"Then should I open a brothel on the Hyperion?" Augustus shot back at him.
"It's not like I'd be against it." Tychus wasn't incapable of doing such a thing; the work he was most suited for should have been piracy.
"Jimmy, you think so too, don't you?" Tychus looked at Raynor and winked.
"How so?" Raynor also thought the idea sounded good: "Has Joey agreed to it? The Hyperion does need a bartender."
"No, no, no, I mean bring the whole bar aboard, you get what I mean? An entire bar." Tychus waved his hand. "Of course he has to agree—what other choice does he have?"
"Stop daydreaming, Tychus." Augustus cut him off with one line.
Exit A's passageway connected directly to the bridge entrance. Two Raynor's Raiders in blue powered armor were standing guard at the bridge doors.
Seeing Augustus in his dark gray military coat and the senior officers following behind him—colonels and above—the two Raiders on duty immediately saluted.
"Good morning, soldiers," Augustus returned the salute.
"Good morning, sir!" the two soldiers replied at once.
"Mm." Augustus nodded. "Full of spirit."
"You're just privates now, but one day you'll become the finest marines."
"These are recruits I pulled from Mar Sara, each one a stout lad," Raynor introduced to Augustus.
"You've got a thing for Mar Sarans, Jimmy." Tychus ribbed from the side. "In your unit, there are even more Mar Sarans than Korhalans. I think it's because deep down you're really just a wild cowboy, always managing to hit it off with Mar Sarans."
"I could tell from the start you were someone meant to do big things," Harnack said. "I've seen her; that Mar Saran woman is very pretty—"
"You two getting married?"
"I think so," Raynor answered. "On Shiloh, at my age, a farm boy really has reached the time when he should be courting a girl from a neighboring town."
"Churches and priests are hard to find—that's what's worrying me—but I suppose it doesn't have to be Christian."
"I once thought I wouldn't live to see the day you got married." Harnack was truly happy for Raynor. "It hasn't even been that long, and you're already going to be a father. With the boss as godfather, he's bound to have the makings of a revolutionary."
Just then, after a bout of shuddering, the Hyperion's bridge returned to steady flight, and the windows that had been dark suddenly filled with countless stars.
"Right on time—said we'd arrive at this hour and here we are," Tychus clicked his tongue in wonder.
"New equipment?" Harnack suddenly sprang out from behind Raynor, nimble like a red-crested rooster taking flight.
What Harnack was pointing at was the Hyperion's bridge holographic projection of the mechanical adjutant; only recently had Augustus put this intelligent machine back into service.
The adjutant's main body was located in the Hyperion's main control room. It was a semi-humanoid machine, its upper body modeled on a human female, linked by numerous cables to the main control room's database, able to rely on the computing power of its built-in supercomputer to give the commander many recommendations.
What appeared on the bridge was the holographic projection of this intelligent adjutant; its original might have been a beauty—at least that alloy-cast face was not unpleasant to look at.
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