Augustus and Raynor fell silent. They watched the distant convoy and the marching troops for a while, then suddenly let out a long breath.
"I can't believe we actually won," Raynor said.
"Yeah." Augustus said, "We spent over a month preparing for this day—surveying the terrain, holding operations meetings, racking our brains. So many people died, but at least we didn't lose."
"Where's Duke?" Raynor suddenly remembered. "I recall you said he was the first to surrender."
"To be honest, I'm not the least bit surprised. Edmund Duke doesn't look like the steadfast type."
"Where is he now?" Mira Han planted her fists on her hips and looked at Augustus. This suit of powered armor was still too big for the petite Mira; she had to pad her seat with a stack of cushions about 30 cm thick, or once she opened the powered armor she'd only have her eyes and nose showing.
"I have to give my people an answer."
"He's right next door." Augustus led Raynor and Mira toward the adjacent command center. "Tychus and Harnack are watching him."
"Let's hope those two don't break Duke while they're at it," Mira said, startlingly blunt.
The command center Augustus was heading to had lifted off from Fort Martin and set down at the chokepoint position. Per Augustus's orders, the Revolutionary Army Engineer Corps under Rory Swann had reinforced this command center beyond its superstructure and main body with stronger steel framing and battlecruiser-class titanium-alloy plating, and had also mounted multiple 250 mm railgun cannons.
The added armor and heavy guns were so massive that the hulking structure had lost the ability to fly.
By now the command center had been nearly reduced to wreckage. Scorch marks from energy weapons were plainly visible; most of the armor plates had been holed through, looking like scorched fish scales.
Passing through a door guarded by two Revolutionary Army sergeants, Augustus and Raynor stepped into the temporary cell holding Edmund Duke.
As they entered the temporary cell, Augustus saw Duke sitting on an iron chair, his hands and feet locked in electromagnetic manacles. Duke's angular skull was bruised purple and green; he didn't dare move. Apparently Tychus and Harnack had not held back with their fists and boots—those two bastards never cared whether prisoners should be treated with mercy.
"Damn Mengsk, this is not what you promised! I should be a general, not a prisoner!" Duke sprang to his feet the moment he saw Augustus.
"That need not be a contradiction." Raynor watched Duke clench his iron fists. Back at Turaxis II, Augustus's men had already been itching to rough Duke up; after this battle there were even more who hated him.
"Heard you switched sides?" Raynor taunted.
"Sit down." Augustus said quietly to Duke.
"Your mission is not yet complete. I still need you to do two things."
"And then you'll kill me?" Duke stared at Augustus, sweat running cold down his face. He believed Augustus was no kind man. Augustus was Mengsk's wolf—wolves are meant to be ruthless, to tear men apart and leave no bones.
"I have use. I am of the Duke family; I know the deployment maps of Tarsonis' defense forces and the weaknesses of the other naval squadrons. Killing me won't gain you more than making me swear loyalty to you." he said, agitated.
"I've had enough of the idiots in Parliament and Navy HQ. They envied my talent and left me a colonel for over a decade!"
"I do not mistrust those I use; I place no doubt in the men I employ," Augustus said calmly. "If you can take your Alpha Squadron and eliminate the governor's forces on Mar Sara, kill him with your own hands, then I will, for the time being, trust your loyalty."
"There's another Alpha Squadron marine force of roughly ten thousand on the Ridge Plains; I need you to persuade that unit to surrender."
Duke's landing forces had come in three waves onto Mar Sara. Augustus had destroyed the two waves commanded by Duke; the remaining force was commanded by a Confederacy marine colonel. That colonel had heard Duke's order to surrender to the Revolutionary Army, but no matter what he thought, that unit did not surrender. Instead it lingered at the landing site, deliberately attacking towns controlled by the Revolutionary Army.
For Augustus, minimizing losses—or even better, taking those Alpha Squadrons without bloodshed—was the ideal. If possible, he also hoped to put the Alpha Squadrons to his own use.
"How can you trust such a viper?" Raynor widened his eyes.
"Don't worry, Jimmy, now he's our viper," Augustus replied.
"I'll do as you say. You can trust me." Duke swore, "I swear allegiance to you, by my family and my honor."
"All right, whatever. Before that, let me beat him up first." Raynor waved his fist.
…
February 20th, 17:00 hours, Fort Martin.
The armory of Fort Martin was piled high with power armor and weapons seized from Alpha Squadron. In the plazas and open grounds stood the Confederacy's standard railguns, howitzers, and self-propelled artillery.
The units withdrawn from the front were resting in the temporary camps set up outside Fort Martin. Compared to when they had set out, many were gone. Entire squads, platoons, even companies had been wiped out. All the survivors could do was mourn the dead.
Of the Korhal-born soldiers who had first set out with Augustus's fleet, fewer than 15,000 remained. They were reorganized into a veteran division directly under headquarters command, hailed as Augustus's own personal Guard Division.
Within the command center, every department was still conducting post-battle tallies and cleanup: compiling casualty lists, registering and searching for the missing, categorizing captured spoils. Above the command hub, a Revolutionary fleet Behemoth-class battlecruiser hovered more than 2.4 km overhead. Swarms of transports and fighters used this massive warship, like a floating steel city, as their home port, shuttling endlessly between sky and ground.
Inside the command island, Augustus, running a hand through his hair, paced back and forth while processing the flood of reports from every department. He studied maps, scanned casualty rosters, drafted letters to Angus Mengsk on distant Umoja, urging him to leverage this victory in the Umojan Republic's elected council to win more military aid for the Revolution.
At the same time, Augustus was waiting for the final wrap-up operations of the campaign.
Earlier that morning, Edmund Duke, now sworn to Augustus, had led his guard unit together with the two brigades of Jim Raynor and Tychus Findlay. They marched to rendezvous with Warfield's airborne troops on the Ridge Plains, closing in to encircle the last remnants of Alpha Squadron's landing forces still roaming that sector.
From the reports reaching Augustus, Duke's surrender negotiations had gone surprisingly well. When he, in the authority of supreme commander, ordered the soldiers of that force to lay down their arms, even though some Alpha Squadron officers still loyal to the Confederacy denounced Duke as a traitor, it was useless.
The resocialized soldiers, with their neural reconditioning and lobotomized obedience, could not comprehend any necessary link between Duke's "treason" and disobeying his command. After hours of confusion, officers found themselves unable to compel troops who had already set down their weapons to resume fighting.
Soon enough, the officers of that Alpha Squadron detachment lost the will to keep fighting. Units surrendered one after another to the Revolutionaries; those who kept resisting were steadily crushed as the resocialized troops stood indifferent.
By 19:00, Augustus received Raynor's report: the last Confederate force had announced its surrender. The Revolution now held complete control over all the cities, industrial zones, and mining districts of Mar Sara's southern hemisphere.
Only then did Augustus let out a long breath of relief.
Close to 20:00, two of Duke's Ghost operatives, using Alpha Squadron's command channels, contacted the fleeing Governor of Mar Sara. Under the guise of offering protection, they secured his location, apprehended him, and delivered him into Augustus's hands.
This marked the complete end of the Terran Confederacy's rule on this planet, with the Revolutionaries taking over all state governments and most township administrations.
Upon receiving the news, Augustus fetched a bottle of red wine brought from Korhal IV, intending to celebrate. Yet when he thought of those Revolutionary wounded still suffering in the hospitals, he silently set the wine back.
Immediately after, Augustus ordered Kerrigan to prepare a command vehicle to head for the field hospital.
The large field hospital, built from modular new alloys and prefabricated panels by the Revolution's 1st Engineering Regiment, stood within a basin formed by geological shifts in the barren plains. Its structures were draped with environmental simulation screens, effectively shielding them from enemy reconnaissance craft.
Augustus, accompanied by several staff officers, walked the prefab corridors of the field hospital. Passing one ward after another, separated by doors of color-shifting glass, he heard intermittent cries of pain and once again felt the cruelty of war.
The corridor walls were painted white, green arrows and lettering marking floors and room numbers. Revolutionary military doctors and nurses in white coats hurried past Augustus and his entourage, nodding briefly as they went.
The hospital air was thick with the scent of disinfectant and medicine. Soldiers in uniform pulled carts laden with coagulants, painkillers, and antibiotics through the rows of wards.
Altogether the beds in this field hospital numbered over 15,000, and even so they were barely sufficient. Because of this, the Engineering Regiment was already constructing a second field hospital.
As Augustus rounded a corner, he came face-to-face with Lisa Cassidy—the former Heaven's Devils squad medic, now one of the chief overseers of this field hospital.
"Over 500 are still under emergency care. Our doctors are fighting with everything they have on the operating tables. By now, they've pulled out more fragments from the wounded than anyone could count." Lisa had cut her ginger hair short, leaving a crisp shoulder-length style. She ignored Kerrigan walking behind Augustus.
"Many died right on the operating table, and more didn't even survive the trip from the battlefield to the hospital. Most brought here are young men, sixteen to twenty years old. On Tarsonis, they would still be considered children."
"0.50 caliber Gauss rifle rounds and Goliath autocannon shells have claimed countless lives. All we can do is save as many hands and feet as possible." Lisa spoke calmly, but her tone was laced with despair.
"From the moment the first wounded were carried in before dawn, our doctors have worked without pause, day and night. They've watched one young life after another slip away in their hands, powerless to stop it—as if sand draining through the gaps of their fingers."
"Our doctors are as brave and steadfast as the soldiers themselves. Their deeds deserve to be remembered by all." Augustus paused for several seconds. "Take me to see those warriors."
"I've already arranged it for you," Lisa told him. "They're emotionally stable, no signs of post-battle trauma."
"What can I do for them?" For once, Augustus hesitated before entering.
"You only need to tell them they were brave." Lisa gave a slight nod.
"Tell those left disabled that they no longer have to fight."
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