StarCraft: Tyranid Empire

Uncle Augustus, I have received your reply.

This happened a long time ago, and I have recovered from my illness long ago. I have lost nothing except a few pounds.

I am doing fine now.

The funny thing is that after the battle in Innisfree, I was promoted again and officially took over the 101st Marine Battalion, even though the promotion committee that approved the appointment process knew the details of the battle even before I did. My new adjutant is a Kemorian named Ulrik, who was a diplomat of the Combine. Since we have effectively ruled Moria, he has been "unemployed" and can only try his luck in Tarsonis.

The promotion came too quickly, much faster than I expected. As far as I know, among my classmates at the Steeling Officer Academy, only Ester Foss has a higher rank than me.

Ester was my best friend during the academy. I am very happy for him, but a little jealous of him.

Because Istel joined the battle earlier than me and caught up with the Second Battle of Aiur, I could only run between several sectors far away from the front line, dealing with small branch nests of the Broken Swarm, inferior space pirates and drunken mercenaries.

Sometimes we also have to act as police to mediate armed conflicts, gang fights and even family conflicts among residents. If we happen to be in an agricultural settlement, when the situation is tense, we have to help farmers harvest grain and protect planting areas.

This is not quite the war I imagined. War is hell and the battlefield is a meat grinder.

I am definitely not as brave as I think I am, and I am not afraid of death, but I am more afraid of being a Mengsk but doing nothing.

But I soon realized that even the most insignificant tasks have their value.

After leaving Innisfree, my unit went to Catallena, a planet with vast land and vast oceans, where the most famous species is a huge sea monster.

When the Golden Fleet, corrupted by Amon, attacked, the residents of Catalina were forced to evacuate, and the situation was so critical that they could not even take their most precious belongings with them. The Golden Fleet appeared suddenly, and due to the gap in space technology - but more importantly, due to serious negligence, our irresponsible observers were surprisingly slow to detect any abnormal movements.

In fact, if the Golden Fleet had not suddenly evacuated Catalina before burning it clean, just like when it came, without causing any damage, the observer should not have expected to be released from prison in his lifetime.

We all guessed that it was because our fleet attacked Aiur at that time, because the Protoss had never done such a thing before - the Protoss must have identified something and would not stop.

This just confirmed what General Stukov said: I never knew that the Protoss had the saying of burning things only halfway.

In any case, when we arrived in Catalina, there was no trace of the Protoss, and the biggest threat there was just some beasts that were not much bigger than house cats.

As expected, this was another simple mission, fire reconnaissance, clearing out the non-existent enemies.

The credit came easily.

However, considering that my people had nothing to do, and they would definitely break something when they had nothing to do, I ordered to use the remaining time to repair houses for the residents who were about to return home, rebuild roads and canals, and ensure that power stations and signal relay stations could be restarted once needed.

There are many skilled craftsmen in my Marine Corps. They were workers, farmers and mechanics before joining the army, and you can hardly expect the Protoss Templar to do the work of the Khalai class.

Of course, like other armies, some of my troops were once hooligans, speeders, and even hopeless drug addicts, and a few of them had been in prison. Since the war with Amon, we have been suffering casualties every day, so we have to lower our standards.

I don't know enough about these people to doubt whether we should be on guard against them stealing the property left by the residents of Catalina in a hurry. Even a hero like Tychus Finley had experience stealing munitions in his early years.

Below is a note from Augustus: "Because Tychus needs to steal some "insignificant little things to exchange for a few cents" to pay off his gambling debts and the money he spent on those pink ladies. Even if Tychus is given a mountain of gold, he can become a pauper overnight.

In fact, it is entirely because of me that a man like Tychus was not shot to death. His parents gave him the first life, and I gave him the second, which proves that I am his father."

Actors also agreed with this. It is impossible for a man like him to trust a vicious dog like Tychus. If Tychus must be released to bite people, Arcturus will definitely install a bomb in his power armor and tell him that Mr. Finley's detonator is in my hand now. If he doesn't want to die, he should be obedient.

Valerian continued: But obviously, I must not openly distrust them, otherwise I will lose the army's morale.

If it was my father who led the army at that time, then this matter would be simple. First of all, if my father thought he needed Catalina's support, then he would whip the stealing soldiers in public, and if he thought he didn't need it, then he wouldn't care.

But if it was you, Uncle Augustus, what would you do?

Anyway, in the end I told everyone that if they wanted the people of Catalina to welcome us as they had in the past, they had to love their mothers as they loved their own mothers and treat their homes as they treated their own homes.

I may have made two mistakes. First, I cannot assume that everyone has the minimum ability to empathize, and second, I cannot assume that everyone has a mother.

But I think my subsequent orders are effective. I gave specific orders, such as I prohibited soldiers from entering any houses, even if they were wide open. I ordered them to clean the roads and mow the lawns before evacuating the settlement. If there is any water storage tower that is empty, I hope it has been filled when I leave. In short, everything should be better than when we came.

I think I will never forget how shocked and moved several Catalina residents were when they decided to risk returning to their hometown to rescue their property.

Most of the immigrants to Catalina came from Trinidad, New Trinidad. New Trinidad in the Lucullus system is a cold and barren ash world, and all the population lives in dome cities. It was a prison colony until the prisoners overthrew their guards, and New Trinidad became one of the most chaotic and violent worlds in the Koprulu Sector.

Criminals and pirates ruled New Trinidad, and it was a lawless place.

The Empire has only really begun to rule New Trinidad in recent years, and it is almost unimaginable that there is an army on this world that refuses to plunder and kill.

I mean, if it were other worlds that had already joined the Empire, they would not be too shocked by this. Because we are not the only Imperial army that has done this, and the Korhal Revolutionary Army led by you is the first to do so.

General Raynor told me that half of the Imperial Army today is from the Revolutionary Army and the Sons of Korhal, and even the Imperial Army with the worst military discipline is a hundred times stronger than the best army of the old Federation.

Later I heard that the flags of my battalion are still kept in the colonial office in Catalina. The people there used to tear up the Imperial flags, burn them, and insult them, but now they tattoo them on their bodies just because the Imperial Army has never violated them.

I began to really understand why you always emphasize the difference between the Imperial Army and the old Federation Army, emphasizing discipline, faith and will. Our army comes from the people, so we can't be too far away from the people.

General Matt Horner once said to me: The people's heart is supreme. Don't worry about me, I'm fine.

December 5.

Uncle Augustus, I haven't written to you for a while, because there is really nothing new.

I am now in Frost, and have stayed here for nearly a month, doing nothing all day. And I desperately believe that I will rot on this boring planet until the end of the war.

But one good thing is that this planet is not as cold as I thought before I came, at least most areas are not that cold. This is a vast and magical land, with dense canyons and mountain streams, and under the frosty highlands is a molten gold-like magma lake. As the latitude decreases, the forests covered with snow turn green layer by layer, and those huge mineral veins occupy large areas of high mountain canyons like curved blue ribbons, flashing dark blue light.

There are more than hundreds of planets in the Empire. You may not even notice such a small place when you are busy with your daily affairs.

When we really set foot on this virgin land, the Protoss and the Zerg had already fought a great battle here. This is a battle that is enough to be recorded in history, a textbook Jedi counterattack.

I think this battle is worth some words. On this planet far away from their warm home world, the army of Protoss Commander Alicia was forced into a desperate situation by a huge swarm of Zerg that far outnumbered them.

In comparison, Alicia only had a shaky mothership core and a severely damaged but still loyal Hunter Legion. When the overwhelming army of Mutalisks, Cockroaches and Zerglings was ready to surround and annihilate this Protoss army that decided to fight to the death, the last belated mechanical sentinel and immortal troops were the only support she could get.

I believe that at that time, the cold and ruthless enemy swarm master must have believed that he had already won. Even if he replayed the game a thousand times afterwards, he would not think that there was a possibility of losing the war.

But the impossible happened. Every tactical officer I know refused to include the possibility of a miracle in the discussion of the victory or defeat of the war, and now they also believe that it was an obvious and difficult to replicate miracle.

At the last moment, the Protoss commander used all the power he could use. In hindsight, it was the ultimate use of technological advantages and terrain that was the key to her victory.

The Protoss fought beautifully and won without any difficulty. They used the space-time force field and energy force field to divide the entire battlefield, making the ground and air forces of the Zerg completely disconnected. Then, a large number of Zerg were slaughtered by the Protoss long-range phase weapons like lambs to be slaughtered.

However, the waves washed away the sand, and the past was like smoke. Now the Zerg and the Protoss have left the Frostland, and in the end it was us who stood firm here.

I came to the Frostlands because a Xel'Naga portal had just been discovered in the star region where I was, which greatly shortened the distance between the star system and the core world, so this remote planet suddenly became important.

The shortened transportation routes made mining profitable. Riksville Mining Company invested in 18 refineries, steel mills, and chemical plants in Frostland. Ares Company opened arms factories here without stopping. Even giants like Bennett Industries decided to build turbine factories to provide high-quality parts for their starships.

When the Imperial Navy realized the value of Frostland, a huge starport was built to fill the gap in our military power in this star region.

Once the Empire began to station troops on a planet, the number of ships on the new route increased several times. Three-quarters of the ships from more than 20 worlds began to rush to Frostland and go to the core world through the portal here to feed the industrial behemoth of the Empire.

Crystal ore and high-energy gas are the iron and blood of the new industrial age. When the war machine of the Terran Empire really started to operate, the amount of minerals it consumed every day was the amount of the old Federation in half a year.

In Frostland, factories were built almost overnight, which seemed so uncoordinated, rigid and cold.

The new machines in the factory use the latest technology, most of which are technological innovations we got from the Kel-Morians, the Protoss, and the Xel'Naga. Today, we can raze a mine faster than the Kel-Morians, and the destructive power is even greater than that.

This is the speed of the Empire promoted by the UNN, this is plunder.

I have only been on this planet for a month, and the industrial zone near the station has expanded three times. With the arrival of these workers, various corresponding industries, including food, retail and other companies, have also taken root, but these are mostly subsidiary industries of the huge industrial complexes of the Empire.

In this way, the Frost Land became the territory of the Empire.

But I have to say that the workers here do not live well. Most of them have to drive engineering vehicles all day to work in the underground mines that run through the entire mountain range. Even here, some people can't even get one. They live apart from their families, earn 80 Imperial credits a day, and have no vacation except for fixed rotations.

This income is already quite good in the Empire, but it is obviously not proportional to the labor they put in.

The bottom workers are basically not natives, because the mining companies do not want to pay a penny for the insurance of these illegal immigrants, nor do they want to pay compensation for breach of contract and dismissal of imperial citizens. If they can, those stingy, money-loving "goblins" will hire infected people to work for them.

December 27.

The news of the victory of the Battle of Aiur came. We defeated Amon's evil god host and saved the corrupted Protoss. The whole country of the empire was jubilant.

I was happy and sad, and felt that I had had enough of all this. I lied to you before, and I still couldn't accept that when my teachers and classmates were fighting for the empire, I could only hide behind them.

But there was a good thing. I finally received a notice to go out to protect an archaeologist named Jack Rasim (the protagonist of the official novel Dark Templar Trilogy). He and his team were hired by the Imperial government and were preparing to go through the Frost Land to a former Nerazim Protoss world called Lerilak Crest to excavate Xel'Naga artifacts.

I had a great conversation with Jack. You have always known that I have been interested in alien mysteries since I was a child. My mother said that I have the potential to become an archaeologist.

No one could have imagined that archaeology, which was ignored in the past, suddenly became a promising and popular subject, linked to the research and development of cutting-edge technology.

In a letter to my grandfather later, I told my views on archaeology. Finally, I hope he can "inadvertently" mention this to my father, saying that I am really tired of staying in the rear with nothing to do. If I can't go to the front-line troops, I would rather retire and give up inheriting the family business to become an archaeologist.

Aha, then compared to directly losing the only heir, my father may not mind letting me go to the front line to gain experience. He will arrange for me to help the greatest and most victorious generals of the empire, but it is better than peeling potatoes every day in the rear.

As long as it is not General Duke.

At this moment, Arcturus's face turned green: "Young people always think that if they want to create their own foundation, the first thing is to fight against their fathers!" (End of this chapter)