"A new report, Augustus," Kerrigan suddenly said to him.
"Call me Marshal." Augustus moved two steps.
"My detectors picked up radar and communication signals in the southern hemisphere of Chau Sara—that is, on the far side of the planet." Kerrigan looked at Augustus. "According to what we know, there should not be many people left on the far side."
"Are there still survivors?" Augustus furrowed his brows.
"Based on the results of our decryption, those communications use at least Level Five encryption. That cannot be civilian communicators, and they have not sent out any distress signals," Kerrigan said.
"Send an investigation squad to look into this. No—send at least two special tactics companies as well," Augustus said.
Anyone who had investigated Chau Sara would find this a very strange matter. The overwhelming majority of this planet's population was concentrated in the northern hemisphere where the Revolutionary Army had landed, but the Jormungand Brood's invasion had clearly begun from the southern hemisphere, and the main hive constructions were also concentrated in the southern hemisphere.
"What are you suspecting?" Kerrigan had already gotten used to not reading Augustus's thoughts; otherwise, their time together would become quite dull.
"Do you remember that Confederacy research center on Vyctor V that studied the Zerg?" Augustus asked.
"If the Confederacy broke the taboo long ago, then such laboratories are clearly not limited to just one," he said. "It is very possible the Confederacy also built such a laboratory on Chau Sara, and that they already achieved some results—that is the reason they survived."
"What about Jim? Have him take responsibility for this."
"These bastards." Kerrigan cursed under her breath while relaying Augustus's order, instructing Jim Raynor—who was currently on the Hyperion's landing deck—to immediately begin organizing an elite unit to execute Augustus's command.
"You think these Zerg were brought here by the Confederacy? So they stood by and watched, because this was the outcome they wanted—but why would the Confederacy do that?"
"The Zerg are a weapon." Augustus's eyes carried deeper meaning. "The Zerg are mindless monsters—brutal and bloodthirsty, as if born solely for killing. As a weapon, they are undoubtedly the most efficient and the most lethal."
"Think about it. If the Kel-Morians were still fighting the Terran Confederacy, and the Confederacy could release the Zerg on Moria or lure them there—what would happen?" Augustus said.
"Even if Moria could hold out, their strength would be massively reduced. They would have no choice but to seek aid from their fellow Terrans, and in the end, they could only exist as a vassal of the Terran Confederacy."
"No one would suspect the Terran Confederacy," Kerrigan, a very intelligent woman, quickly understood what Augustus meant. "The Confederacy will destroy all evidence, just like what it once did to the Ghost agents."
"In the end, they will only say: the poor Kel-Morians merely happened to be standing on the migration path of alien creatures," Augustus said with deep meaning. "Our Kel-Morian compatriots are simply too unfortunate. And for the sake of fellow Terrans, Daddy Terran will generously step in, and the Combine will only need to pay a very, very small price."
"Those politicians in the Confederacy Assembly are adept at calculation. They do not care whether tens of thousands must die for their goals. From the fate of Korhal IV, I already saw this clearly. You can never talk ethics with the vampires in the Tarsonis 'Royal Court,'" he said.
"But they lifted a stone only to smash their own feet," Kerrigan said. No matter what conspiracy the Terran Confederacy was planning, letting the Zerg destroy Chau Sara could not have been their original intention.
Chau Sara had always been a flourishing planet loyal to the Confederacy. If they wanted to destroy a planet, the first one should have been Mar Sara, which had once betrayed the Confederacy.
"No matter what, they undoubtedly played with fire," Augustus kept his expression unchanged. "The Zerg they contacted might have only numbered in the hundreds or thousands, so they naively believed that even greater numbers would still remain within controllable limits. But in reality, the Zerg can only be counted in billions—this is playing with fire and burning oneself."
"When the Zerg finish their mission, burying them in the ground is the best fertilizer, and they might even become exported food for the Kel-Morians and the Umojans," he said.
"But the Confederacy miscalculated one thing—that they had never encountered Zerg variants carrying deadly viruses or parasites and other infection sources."
Augustus could guess the cause and effect. The Confederacy's Chau Sara base must have contained many Zerg individuals from the Jormungand Brood, all originating from the latter's scouting units. Originally, the Jormungand Brood still needed to wait a few more years before invading the Sara star system, because it was in no hurry to devour the Terrans.
After Kerrigan drew the attention of the Zerg Overmind, a chain reaction caused the Jormungand Brood to accelerate its invasion of the Koprulu Sector and to target the Confederacy researchers who had courted death.
Yet even so, the Terran Confederacy might still have believed the situation remained under its control, and what it feared most was that the mere fact of the Zerg's existence would be leaked. Therefore, it allowed the destruction of Chau Sara to happen.
Because everyone on Chau Sara had already seen the Zerg, and according to the Confederacy's usual ways, eliminating all witnesses was the best way to eliminate evidence.
"This is Tychus Findlay… and the boy Hank's unit. We have completed the evacuation mission. Requesting extraction." At this moment, Tychus's old face—currently clamping a cigar between his teeth—suddenly appeared on Augustus's main screen.
Tychus, wearing dark-red powered armor, was stepping on the multicolored crest atop a massive Hydralisk's head. Behind him stood the larger Firebat commander Hank Harnack and several engineers operating tower cranes to move Zerg corpses and load them onto the transport.
"Approve that request," Augustus said.
"I never thought you wouldn't approve it." There was quite a bit of dark-purple blood splattered on Tychus's helmet. "I'm only saying it because it's procedure. Seriously—why is it always me and Hank doing this kind of exhausting and miserable work while you hide behind a screen?"
"If you could stand here and 'command the armies,' I'd be happy to personally take the front line." Augustus said, "The capable shoulder more work. The greater the risk you take, the more you gain."
"Command the armies? Forget it. I can't even manage myself." Tychus believed his strength lay in knowing his own limits—just as he had never denied that he was a bad man.
"But I just like a Marshal like you. I'm a Revolutionary soldier; doing revolution isn't for money or for this reward or that reward."
"This month your salary will be tripled. The money will be transferred into your account at the Umojan Bank." Augustus heard Tychus's implied meaning. This scoundrel full of dirty tricks would only risk his life for money. The sum might be a large fortune, but it was absolutely worth it.
After all, Tychus Findlay would soon spend that money in the Hyperion's onboard bar or lose it all at the gambling table, and in the end, it would return to Augustus's pocket.
"You may not realize this, but I want to tell you—I love you, Augustus." As Tychus walked toward the evacuation ship, he said this shamelessly.
"You really should come down to the surface to hunt Zerg. What I want to tell you is—I took first place in the Hydralisk hunting contest. Tychus Findlay-brand insecticide. You deserve it."
"Next time." Augustus shrugged. "Navigator, return immediately to high-altitude orbit above Chau Sara."
But as the Hyperion raised its bow and prepared to depart, the voice of Revolutionary Army Lieutenant General Horace Warfield came through the communications channel.
"Iron Justice calling the Hyperion bridge. The Confederacy's Omega Squadron is heading straight toward us. The enemy flagship, Deadman's Omega, is opening fire on us."
...
When the Hyperion pulled up and climbed, its posture was like a blue whale leaping upward. In the bright orange tail flames of its thrusters, it rose all the way, cutting through clouds and climbing to an altitude of ten thousand feet, reaching the escape velocity of the planet Chau Sara. Tens of thousands of screeching dragon-like Zerg creatures pursued this enormous steel giant ship relentlessly, as if a mass of black smoke swirling around it.
A massive warship wanting to break free of gravity needed to pay an incomparably arduous effort and a multiplied amount of fuel, and if it was too massive, once it entered low orbit it would be crushed by its own gravity. If the Terran wanted to build truly unparalleled grand warships, they would also have to keep breaking through in materials science and ship-structure engineering.
Augustus stood steadily on the bridge of the constantly jolting and trembling Hyperion, watching the scene in that huge observation window shift from Chau Sara's purple-black land covered in layers of thick creep mats to a blue-green sky, and then to the star-filled darkness of deep space.
The Zerg still followed relentlessly. The wings, head crests, and carapaces of these Zerg reflected a kind of bright purple under the starlight of the Sara star system's star. Augustus believed this should be the distinguishing mark that separated the Jormungandr Brood from other Zerg hive clusters.
Having leapt out of Chau Sara's gravitational field, the Hyperion had merely stepped from one battlefield into another. More than ten revolutionary army battlecruisers, over a hundred giant-class frigates, and numerous medium and small commercial refitted gunboats and assault barges were engaging the dense mass of Zerg beside the Zerg Behemoth.
At the moment Augustus's Hyperion leapt into synchronous orbit, a Terran Confederacy force with pure black hull paint jumped straight out of the warp lane and joined the battlefield of the revolutionary fleet and the Jormungandr Brood, and the war situation instantly became even more chaotic.
The white skull symbols and inverted "U"-shaped insignias on these black battlecruisers indicated that they were Omega Squadron, a squadron on the same rank as Alpha Squadron. This squadron was always associated with death and slaughter, most often carrying out the duties of executioners.
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