"Dorian System, within the Kel-Morian Combine, one of the main battlefields during the Guild Wars."
"An untagged transmission received—" The adjutant's voice was not a synthetic machine tone, but a clear and pleasant female voice; even so, one could not expect it to possess any emotion.
"Play it." Augustus walked across the bridge and came before the main holographic screen.
"This is the Kel-Morian Combine cruiser fleet. Unregistered battlecruiser, identify yourself, or we will—" The speaker on the main screen was a naval commander of the Kel-Morian Combine, with the brown hair and dark pupils common among Kel-Morians.
That Kel-Morian commander began with a forceful air of interrogation, but when the Revolutionary Army fleet's other 17 battlecruisers successively jumped out of hyperspace, he suddenly found himself at a loss for words.
The Kel-Morian fleet possessed only 2 Heracles-class battlecruisers and several dozen attendant vessels; facing the Revolutionary Army fleet, they seemed weak and isolated.
Augustus's Revolutionary Army fleet amounted to nearly 2 understrength squadrons of the Terran Confederacy Navy; given the Kel-Morian Combine's greatly shrunken fleet size, such a massive force would naturally be regarded by the other side as a threat.
"I am Augustus Mensk. I request a meeting with the Chairman of the Combine's Board of Directors," Augustus said to him. "Your Naval Headquarters should have notified you that a fleet would be arriving in the near term—"
"Marshal Augustus, forgive my discourtesy." In fact, the Kel-Morian naval commander's manner had already recognized Augustus, but only when the Revolutionary Army fleet had fully arrived did he put away his impatience.
"According to Headquarters' orders, you will be granted the right to make a brief stopover at Moria, but we will not permit such a massive fleet to enter the Moria System."
...
Moria is a vast red planet whose diameter exceeds 13,411 km and whose gravity is 1.16 times standard Earth gravity.
For a long time, Moria has been the largest repository of ore and gas resources among the Koprulu human worlds; its broad redlands are crisscrossed by wastelands and vast seas of dust.
Grand mining facilities, factories, and gas refineries spread across the plains and rugged ranges of its main continental plates; extensive stripped ore veins form desolate bands that scar Moria's rough red skin, each scar a constant testament to the Kel-Morian Combine's willingness to pay any price and exhaust every means for profit.
Between the deep pits left by excavation lie the gigantic cities where Morian people burrow deep underground; across wind-blasted ridges and rock shelves stand wide-area Kel-Morian mining shafts, towers, and the large urban centers built around them.
Advanced industry and sparse green cover have turned Moria into a monochrome industrial world: brown and black metal cities and factories that never sleep have reshaped the planet's surface, and together with raging winds and floods continue to erode and transform this ancient world that once nurtured the first Morians.
The APOD-33 transport carrying Augustus Mengsk was flying over the vast red plains of the Morian Jacob sector, escorted on both sides of the transport by sixteen Kel-Morian hellhound fighters—each hull painted with a blood-red three-headed hellhound emblem—any civilian craft caught on the mixed flight path of this formation would receive a stern warning from the hellhound pilots.
Through the observation window Augustus could see canyons stretching thousands of kilometers and the surface stripped bare by exhausted mining zones, and thousands of semi-abandoned mining habitation stations looming amid the dust.
"I never dreamed I'd get a chance to come to Moria—the Kel-Morian bastard's lair, the sewer of sewers, the heap of heaps," Tychus sat in the seat to Augustus's right, holding a Kel-Morian porn magazine.
This modified APOD transport had 48 comfortable, spacious seats; at this moment it was filled with men and women in dark-gray dress uniforms, Augustus and his generals and guards admiring Moria's vast, spectacular scenery.
"Wait and see—later I'll tear those Kel-Morian sons of bitches a new one," Tychus, a Marine veteran with over 10 years' service who had endured the 4-year Guild Wars, said with hatred that had long since taken root.
Even Augustus and Raynor still held a grudge over the deaths of Omer and Benjamin the previous year; they reserved smiles only for Kel-Morians who had earned their respect, like Rory Swann.
"You'll only turn this into a diplomatic incident," Augustus's thick brows knit. "If you hadn't begged me to bring you, I'd sooner have brought a pig. Don't cause me trouble or I'll have you scrubbing the galley on the Hyperion with your bare hands—I mean it, no sonic dishwasher, just hand-washing dishes."
"I'm only joking," Tychus immediately deflated.
Augustus rarely lost his temper, but on certain matters of principle he was stubborn. If someone nearby angered him, his typical punishment was to make them wash an entire crew's worth of plates and bowls by hand.
"Haha, I rarely get to see the famous Tychus Findlay back down like this." Sitting nearby, Warfield let out a hearty laugh. "I heard our enemies call Findlay Augustus's mad dog, a caged lion who only turns into a lapdog when it comes to Augustus."
"Tychus is just a cat, always puffing up his fur. You've got to stroke him along the grain, but we never indulge this guy," Harnack said as he chewed on peanuts.
"Hank, I knew nothing good ever comes out of your dog's mouth," Tychus snapped, not daring to vent at Augustus, and wary of Warfield as well, so he could only lose his temper at Harnack.
Among the senior officers of the Revolutionary Army, Augustus and Warfield were without a doubt the most authoritative figures. The former was the absolute Marshal whose prestige had reached its peak through countless campaigns. The latter was senior in years, with vast combat command experience, respected as half a mentor to the Marshal, and was even said to hold quite a few black marks from Augustus's youth.
As for Tychus and Harnack, both of them were the kind of men who were not very well liked, and their relationship with each other didn't look too good. In the past it had been Josephine and Harnack often bickering, but now that role had shifted to Tychus.
Aside from Raynor, Lundstein, and Duke, nearly all of the Revolutionary Army's senior commanders were present today. It was impossible for Augustus to bring everyone to Moria, as someone still needed to sit in command of the fleet, and the tens of thousands of resocialized soldiers under Duke, who had only just joined the Revolutionary Army, still required a capable commander to keep them in line.
Duke's authority over Alpha Squadron had long since been stripped away by Augustus, and it would take him a considerable amount of time to prove his loyalty. Otherwise, Augustus's two Ghost "Specter Hands," each bearing a pair of long blades, would continue to shadow him wherever he went.
While Tychus was still bickering with Harnack, the APOD transport finally arrived at their destination: Moria's largest industrial metropolis, Jacob Prime, the commercial empire's center of the Kel-Morian Combine, a bronze-colored, unparalleled megacity.
Jacob Prime lay within a wide flood-carved canyon, said to have once been the landing site of the colony mothership Jacob. The lower levels of Jacob City occupied most of the canyon, while the upper levels exposed to sunlight boasted countless spires piercing the clouds and starship launch ports, with transport barges over 300 m long shuttling between massive trade stations in synchronous orbit.
Among the planets Augustus had visited, this vast red world left him deeply impressed with its highly developed industrial cities and super-mines that burrowed deep underground. Within the Terran Confederacy, many planets rivaled Moria in desolation, yet none came close to matching its prosperity.
The Umojans were long known across the Koprulu sector for their cutting-edge technology and intelligent machinery, while the Kel-Morian Combine's homeworld Moria stood far ahead of its two brothers in the Koprulu sector with its flourishing mining, processing, and manufacturing industries.
Anyone who came to this red planet marveled at the Morians' colossal cities, super forges using volcanoes as furnaces, and its spectacular industrial plains. But Augustus's first thought upon arriving was how many troops should be stationed here, and how many fortresses should be built.
"Moria is fertile ground for industry. Who knows how many warships, war machines, and tanks the forges and heavy workshops here could churn out in their prime—and even so, they still lost."
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