"Save the children first!"
Augustus's words were transmitted through the Hyperion's command channel to all the warships in the revolutionary army fleet, and more than one hundred thousand people were simultaneously carrying out his orders, forming an orderly and unified whole.
"Connect to Warfield's Iron Justice." Augustus immediately issued the next order without pause.
"This is Warfield. The Iron Justice is engaging the Zerg. My ship's port side is damaged, and the Norad's main engine is damaged." Warfield's dark and stern face appeared on the Hyperion's main screen.
"General, I need you to hold out for a period of time. Activate the warp engine in advance and be ready to jump at my command at any moment." Augustus said to Warfield.
"No problem." Warfield said. "I have plenty of ways to deal with these alien monsters."
At this very moment, outside the Iron Justice's bridge was a completely different scene.
In the darkness of deep space, the Terran steel fleet was exchanging fire with vast numbers of flying Zerg creatures.
Even from Warfield's position, he could see an incomparably massive Zerg behemoth anchored in outer orbit above Chau Sara. It was a creature whose appearance lay somewhere between a manta ray and a giant whale, its size far exceeding that of any lifeform humanity had encountered in the Milky Way—stretching several miles, more than ten times the size of a Terran battlecruiser, like an organic island floating in the cosmos.
It occupied nearly the entire side observation window behind Warfield on the Iron Justice, resembling a black moon, and even Terran battlecruisers appeared tiny before it.
From the images displayed on the detector screen beside Warfield, one could see thousands upon thousands of Zerg continuously leaping out from the ugly folds and sacs on the surface of this enormous organic warship.
"What is that?" Even though he had already seen this incomparably massive creature, Raynor still could not move his gaze away from it.
"Behemoth." Augustus said. "Name it with the name of this mythical giant beast to record the distinction between it and others of its kind."
"The Swarm Behemoth."
...
The Hyperion's bridge deck was still trembling, looking as though this steel giant of astonishing tonnage were sailing through a storm powerful enough to overturn a city. But this storm was absolutely not some unusual natural phenomenon; it was formed by tens of millions of raging Zerg flying creatures.
This deep-blue-armored battlecruiser, with a mottled gray wolf-head emblem on its bow, was traveling several thousand feet above Los Andares, the capital of Chau Sara. Centered on it, masses of Zerg flying creatures—huge Overlords, swarms of flyer broodlings like flying spiders, and Mutalisks beating a pair of membranous flesh-wings—pounced from all directions, like clusters of black smoke and cloud.
At an even higher altitude, four Behemoth-class battlecruisers of the Revolutionary Army were currently descending from the sky, their hulls releasing bright light as they passed through the atmosphere, as though a layer of flame clung to their surfaces.
Wraith fighters and Avenger fighters with triangular wings were fighting fiercely with the Mutalisks flying outside the observation windows. From time to time, a Terran fighter would be hit by acid or be directly torn apart, turning into drifting black smoke as it fell. Large numbers of Zerg were blasted apart under the fire of Terran autocannons and laser batteries.
"How is the rescue progressing?" Augustus placed one hand on the railing at the front of the Hyperion's bridge, feeling the slight numbness brought by the ship's tremors.
Although the Hyperion possessed a mechanical adjutant, Augustus still preferred having someone with a sharper tactical mind and autonomous awareness serve as his military adviser and battlefield adjutant.
And even so, Augustus often needed to rely on the mechanical adjutant to compile and verify the immense data stored within the Hyperion's archive database and communications network. To this day, mechanical adjutants remained one of the greatest inventions of humanity in the Koprulu Sector.
Mechanical adjutants were absolutely loyal, capable of completing quadrillions of calculations within fractions of a second, and able to remain unmoving and fully focused at all times to help a Terran commander observe battlefield developments and assist the commander in making reasonable decisions.
At this moment, more than five hours had passed since the Revolutionary Army reached Chau Sara's high-altitude orbit. During this period, Augustus's fleet and the fleets of the Confederacy and the Jormungand Brood had been fighting fiercely throughout the Sara star system. And every few minutes, a report on the landing positions and casualties of the troops deploying to Chau Sara's surface was submitted to Augustus.
"Tychus Findlay's division and Hank Harnack's Red Demon flamethrower unit cleared out a Zerg hive on the front side of Los Andares and burned tens of thousands of Zerg into ash. At present, the Magistrate of Los Andares is evacuating the last batch of personnel," Kerrigan said.
Compared to when Sarah Kerrigan first met Augustus, she was now much more mature. If she had still been only a girl before, now she could already be called a woman.
To prevent the Zerg from noticing Kerrigan, Augustus ordered her to discard all Umojan psionic enhancement equipment and to reduce her use of psionics as much as possible.
Normally, Zerg creatures such as Hydralisks could sense the area around psionics users at a range of roughly ten yards to several dozen yards. As long as Kerrigan did not engage the Zerg head-on, the probability of her being noticed was extremely low.
"Deploy all our fighters, gunships, and armed assault ships to provide cover for those transports. Otherwise, those ships are living targets," Augustus said to Kerrigan.
At this moment, even with the naked eye, Augustus could see the Revolutionary Army transports rising outside the observation window. On their wide hulls were red Sons of Korhal emblems and red-cross insignias, making them easy to identify.
In this rescue operation, landing on Chau Sara and pulling everyone left on this planet out was the most difficult phase.
The Zerg had no humanitarian spirit or knightly honor. To them, aside from a few individuals who carried psionics strong enough to drive them into frenzy, humans were no different from any other species. This was nothing more than an ordinary hunt and a feast of devoured biomass.
And even without being present on the battlefield, Augustus, stationed on the flagship, could understand what was happening on Chau Sara's surface through the intermittent images sent back by various aircraft sensors and road-based units.
In the lower-left corner of the Hyperion's main screen was the face of the mechanical adjutant, and the rest of the display showed footage from the front lines and evacuation sites.
Revolutionary Army soldiers wearing dark-red CMC powered armor had already taken full control of the Confederacy's positions, and a red banner with the Ring of Whips replaced the Confederacy's red-and-blue star-stripe flag. Well-prepared, the Revolutionary Army carried large quantities of concentrated-gas flamethrower weapons and high-explosive electromagnetic grenades. No matter the time or place, fire was always the most effective means of dealing with the Zerg.
The Jormungand Brood of Los Andares had never launched the final all-out attack against the Terrans. It was not very interested in destroying every person on the planet. Just like the unending siege the Zerg had carried out against this city two months ago, the Jormungand Brood had been probing the Terrans, as if it were merely recording the Terrans' ways of fighting.
The leader of the Jormungand Brood had been observing, watching with a cruel and absolutely cold mind as the Terrans struggled to survive before the swarm, racking their brains for even the slightest hope of survival.
And the Revolutionary Army soldiers and the accompanying medical personnel who landed on Chau Sara were welcomed and supported by the people of Los Andares. A few months ago, the people of Chau Sara still felt fear and hatred toward the Revolutionary Army, but now, without a doubt, they had become its loyal supporters.
"Tell Tychus to bring back a few living Zerg samples. My xenomorph research specialists need new samples to analyze the Zerg's weaknesses." Augustus did not need to spend extra words to remind the Chau Sara people still stranded in Los Andares to board the ships as fast as possible. Before the desire to survive, no one needed urging from others.
"Have you found the location of the Jormungand Brood's main hive?" he asked again.
"Based on the reconnaissance units' reports, most of the Zerg nests are built underground," Kerrigan said to Augustus.
"The Zerg's habits are similar to some kind of subterranean burrowing spider, and their social structure is closer to that of termites. They have already hollowed out more than two hundred feet—about sixty meters—of Chau Sara's ground, and the various giant caverns are connected to one another by long tunnels, forming a vast underground kingdom."
"What a nightmare." Augustus deeply understood that the destruction the Jormungand Brood had inflicted on Chau Sara might not be recoverable within decades. Even if the Terrans cleared out all Zerg in the future and burned every main hive and creep tumor, this planet would still become a completely barren wasteland.
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