By 07:00 on the morning of the 20th, the sky cleared. One steep cliff face of the Desolate Gorge, nearly vertical to the ground, was bathed in the faintly cold sunlight, while the other side remained dim.
Wearing his commander's powered combat suit, Augustus stood beside a command center at the bottleneck outpost's forward line, looking toward the main battlefield several kilometers away. At his side were Ghost operative Sarah Kerrigan and his security detail's officer, Corporal Faraday.
This had practically become the standard image whenever the Revolutionary Army's Marshal appeared: whether clad in a thick, dark-gray wool overcoat draped like a cloak or inside powered armor, there was always the nondescript-faced corporal and the red-haired operative at his side.
Sometimes Raynor, Tychus, or other Revolutionary Army generals would follow Augustus deep into Mar Sara to survey terrain and draw up battle plans. But wherever Augustus was, Corporal Faraday and Kerrigan were sure to appear, and the reverse held true as well.
Over a thousand transports and medium or small craft were flying at low altitude, about 600 m up, shuttling between the battlefield and the field hospital near Fort Martin's command center, carrying critically wounded soldiers in urgent need of treatment and medics alike.
Aside from the Confederacy's standard APOD-series military transports, nearly two-thirds of them were civilian ships rented by the Revolutionary Army. Most of these civilian craft bore alternating dark yellow and black paint, their shapes varied: from elegant butterfly-like designs to disk-shaped beetle hulls.
Some ships still belched black smoke from their thrusters, since locals on Mar Sara continued using illegally mined and privately refined gas fuel. Even now, strict rationing policies on fuel remained in effect here because of the Guild Wars, making cheap but impure smuggled gas the first choice for many fringe-world residents.
The residents near Desolate Gorge favored the Revolutionary Army far more than Mar Sara's governor or the government's arriving Alpha Squadron. They willingly lent their illegally modified small craft to the revolutionaries, so long as the latter could cover the trivial fuel costs.
Beneath the bottleneck outpost stretched a slope with a drop of several hundred feet. From Augustus's vantage point, he could see convoys rumbling upward, loaded with lightly wounded soldiers and captured supplies.
Armored personnel carriers, starport buses, factory trucks, heavy trucks once used for hauling crystal minerals, and even Mar Sara farmers' grain carts all drove past Augustus one after another, crossing the gorge on a leveled road and heading south.
Most trucks passing him were crammed with wounded. Soldiers stripped of armor lay sprawled across the beds, nearly every one bandaged in blood-stained wraps, rifles still in their arms. Those more gravely injured drifted in and out of sleep, while the ones still awake remained silent.
Behind the convoys full of wounded came the heavy trucks towing artillery: from railguns over 150 mm caliber to howitzers and rocket launchers—by Augustus's own count, over 500 pieces, enough for him to arm a fully organized Marshal's headquarters artillery brigade.
Following those were trucks loaded with CMC powered armor, ammunition crates, and heavy machine cannons, with Revolutionary Army soldiers marching on both flanks of the convoy. Each revolutionary infantryman kept 20–30 m apart, and between them trudged the disarmed Alpha Squadron soldiers, stripped of everything but their black-and-white combat uniforms.
Before dawn, in the battle, Augustus's Revolutionary Army finally crushed Alpha Squadron's landing force, seizing nearly 10,000 intact sets of CMC-300 powered armor along with even more standard Confederacy Marine ammunition. The few thousand remaining suits, once handed over to Rory Swann and Hiram Feek for patching up, could still be put back into use.
At the same time, more than 200 Arclite Tanks and over 160 Goliath combat walkers—which had inflicted heavy losses on the revolutionaries during the campaign—were also captured. As for the rest of Alpha Squadron's vehicles, including armored cars, infantry fighting vehicles, reconnaissance craft, and Vulture bikes, the total reached 2,000. The haul was staggering.
By then, with Alpha Squadron's current flagship Norad III surrendering, the battle in Mar Sara's synchronous orbit had also come to an end. The Revolutionary Army's fleet had broken Alpha Squadron's fleet while suffering only two heavily damaged Behemoth-class battlecruisers.
Four Behemoth-class battlecruisers of the Alpha Fleet were destroyed, while two—including Norad III and Napoleon—surrendered, and the remaining five jumped out of the Sara system.
"How many dead?" Augustus waved toward a departing truck, keeping his iron-hard expression as he asked Kerrigan at his side.
"Fewer than 8,000, with over 30,000 wounded." Kerrigan chose her words carefully. "Alpha Squadron's casualty ratio compared to ours is about two to one, but their dead are more than ours. Their equipment was better, and their firepower stronger."
Compared to the number of soldiers the Revolutionary Army and Alpha Squadron had committed to the battlefield, the revolutionaries' casualty ratio was not as high. In fact, Alpha Squadron's dead approached half of their participating force, and those who survived did so only because they had received Duke's order to surrender.
"Resocialized soldiers are all lunatics. They'd rather bleed out completely than stop fighting, deaf to the screams of their wounded comrades. They're nothing but cheap expendables. Compared to them, the gear on their backs is worth more."
"Bring them all back," Augustus said. "I can't bury them here. I want to take them home."
Kerrigan only blinked, listening intently. By contrast, Corporal Faraday kept his face stiff the whole time. Known as the Marshal's guard captain, this corporal was in fact already the highest-ranking officer of the headquarters security unit, and he was never one for smiling.
"Notify the newly formed Remains Handling Office. I need them to have the soldiers' ashes sent back to Umoja." At this point, Augustus fell silent for several seconds.
"For the soldiers from Deadman's Port—follow their families' wishes. If no one claims them, then bury the fallen from Deadman's Port in the Heroic Spirits Cemetery of New Styrling on Umoja. When we rebuild Korhal, we'll move them to Styrling—"
"I forgot. Styrling no longer exists." Augustus said, "Then bury them in the cemetery of the new capital."
He said no more, because he had just spotted a green Vulture bike kicking up dust in the distance, breaking from the convoy and racing straight toward him.
When the Vulture slid to a sharp stop before Augustus with a neat turn, Jim Raynor and Mira Han leapt off.
"This was the bloodiest battle I've ever fought," Raynor said, grief heavy in his voice.
"So many of my brothers are dead."
"Lately, I often wonder whether all that sacrifice was worth it." Raynor unsealed the faceplate of his powered armor, revealing a face etched with pain.
"I don't like the people of Alpha Squadron, but I have to admit they were far harder to deal with than the Kel-Morian Sea Dragon Legion."
"My fighters threw themselves in one after another—when one man fell, more stepped up. Officers, political commissars, and party members led the charge. In that charnel pit we and Alpha Squadron fought over a patch only about 1 hectare in size, driven by nothing but our blood and fire."
"In the end, we watered this land with our blood, and still you can't grow rye or oats here."
"We held every advantage, and the win was anything but easy," Mira Han followed.
"Besides their Gauss rifles, every weapon they had was better than ours. Their powered armor was faster and tougher than ours, while many of our people were still wearing exoskeleton armor with little protection." Mira's expression was solemn; only in moments like this did she truly look like a leader—commanding, with a palpable pressure.
"Only now do I understand that a regular army is nothing like militia. If any uprising other than ours had run into Alpha Squadron, they'd have broken already. Without us, the Mar Sara folks with pistols and Molotovs who thought they could rise up would have been swept aside like autumn wind scattering fallen leaves."
"To succeed, you have to pay in blood and sweat." Augustus looked at Raynor and Mira, at their scarred and battered powered armor, and understood the kind of ferocity they'd just endured.
"This revolution is no small matter."
"Even if the Terran Confederacy's government remains rotten, its military still upholds the Old Families of Tarsonis in their domination of the Koprulu Sector, grinding down the people of the fringe worlds," he said.
"What we can do is pay in blood, tears, and every hardship we can endure—and those hardships will, one day, bind our fighters tightly together and make them unbreakable."
"The Battle of Mar Sara proved this: the Terran Confederacy's military is not invincible. Even Alpha Squadron fell to us. This giant of a Confederacy is nothing but a clay colossus that shatters at a touch."
"It won't be long before people hear about Alpha Squadron's defeat on Mar Sara."
"I'm afraid it won't be that simple." Raynor shook his head. "The Confederacy will lock down the news of Alpha Squadron's defeat on Mar Sara. They might even claim they've wiped out every last rebel."
"That's where our old friend Mike Liberty will have to work hard. With the Terra Old Family and the Holt Old Family backing him, he's already seized considerable resources at UNN headquarters," Augustus said. "We have our own newspapers and a TV station, but on worlds of the Terran Confederacy, they're banned from broadcast."
"To be honest, I really worry that one day the Confederacy's Ghost operatives will come knocking on Mike's door. He's in a very dangerous spot." Raynor calmed himself. One way or another, they had won. Cost aside, they had wiped out at least 20,000 of Alpha Squadron, and the equipment captured on the field could arm at least two full-strength divisions.
"I don't believe a UNN news host who reports negative stories about the Confederacy every day can be thriving on Tarsonis. He's not only speaking well of us, he keeps exposing dirt on the Tarsonis government."
"Mike is dancing on the edge of a blade." Augustus shrugged.
"Fortunately, his footwork is superb."
"Alright then, God bless him," Raynor forced out an ugly smile. "If there really is a God."
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