Alpha Squadron—known as the "Bloodhawks"—had become a symbol of the Terran Confederacy's elite might for their lightning-fast tactical maneuvering.
They had earned that "good" reputation for bloodshed through feral, ruthless slaughter, and their commander, Edmund Duke, stood at the head of the Bloodhawks. Many considered Duke a hot-tempered, stubborn fool. That wasn't necessarily the whole truth, but it wasn't far off either.
The Norad III, Alpha Squadron's flagship, had been running along a hyperspace lane at faster-than-light speed for more than seventy-two hours. Throughout the transit, crew and marines alike stayed strapped into their acceleration couches. In hyperspace, anyone raised under planetary gravity and within an atmosphere felt at least some degree of discomfort.
Edmund Duke—pacing back and forth on the Norad III's bridge—was clearly not among them. To the Alpha Squadron navigator and systems operators posted at the bridge console, Duke looked like a gorilla in heat; in Duke's own eyes, he was without question a raging lion.
After losing multiple engagements to Augustus's rebel fleet—and even losing his own flagship, the Norad II—Duke had become a laughingstock to many within the Confederacy Navy.
Even so, Duke wouldn't normally fly into a fury over defeats alone. What kept him flaring with anger lately was that, during last year's rebel siege of Tarsonis under Augustus, his Alpha Squadron had been led around by the nose by the Jackson's Revenge.
It turned Alpha Squadron into a complete joke. They chased a pirate ship carrying the original Norad II's signal tracker across the Koprulu Sector for nearly a month—only to lose it in the end.
Nearly two weeks after Augustus's fleet withdrew from the Tarsonis system, Alpha Squadron finally showed up, shamefully late.
Duke had no trouble figuring out that Augustus had hired someone to make a fool of him. Now Duke's hatred for Augustus only continued to mount.
As Colonel Duke's footsteps rang against the alloy steel deck plates of the bridge, no one dared turn to look. Duke didn't mete out corporal punishment, but a blistering tongue-lashing from him was nothing to invite.
At last, after a faint shudder ran through the Norad III, Alpha Squadron's brand-new flagship dropped out of hyperspace.
The Norad III was a Behemoth-class battlecruiser forged near the end of the Guild Wars. More robust than the Norad II, mounting additional laser and cannon batteries, she stood as a paragon of the Confederacy Navy's doctrine of firepower supremacy and the aesthetics of heavy armor and big guns.
As Alpha Squadron's ships emerged from hyperspace, space around them twisted into vortices that drew in light and shed blurred halos. Between the hammerhead silhouettes of the Behemoth-class battlecruisers moved rectangular destroyers, supply ships, APOD transports, and Wraith fighters.
There were also two science vessels within Alpha Squadron's formation. Their gyroscope-like hulls measured up to about 300 m in diameter, their tops crowned with radar antennae and cutting-edge sensor arrays. On the hull of one, stenciled in white letters, was a single name: Amerigo.
The Terran Confederacy typically employed science vessels' high-sensitivity sensor arrays for border surveillance and security scans. At present, these ships were mainly tasked with research; Confederacy scientists were still working to retrofit them with weapons and shield systems.
"Damn Augustus Mengsk—I saw through his wolfish ambition from the start!" No sooner had the Norad III dropped out of hyperspace than the main bridge display before Duke lit up with feeds from the synchronous-orbit station over Mar Sara and spaceborne imagery, showing multiple regions of the planet engulfed in war.
Rebel troops and armored columns were advancing across the orange-gray Gobi, and many Confederacy bases and fortresses lay in ruins.
Duke quickly realized that if his forces could still link to the satellites and station in Mar Sara's synchronous orbit, then those assets had not fallen into rebel hands.
However feeble the rebel fleet might be, they would at least have managed that. The rebels' intent, then, was obvious: they wanted the Confederacy fleet to take control of those facilities and see for themselves whether Mar Sara truly was in dire straits.
Meanwhile, the Norad III's radar plot registered six battlecruiser contacts—two of them already-obsolete Leviathan-class hulls—and the science vessels' sensor arrays picked up additional small craft concealed on the planet's far side.
"Amerigo to flagship bridge: we detected hyperspace-lane fluctuations two standard hours ago at grid 7,114," the Amerigo's captain reported to Duke.
"The rebels are about to run!" Duke grasped it in an instant. "Cut them off!"
The 'wise' and valiant Colonel Duke made his decision at once. Eager to meet the Revolutionary Army's fleet head-on and wipe away his disgrace, he gave the order.
Alpha Squadron fielded eleven active Behemoth-class battlecruisers. At Duke's command, those peerless iron leviathans drove straight toward the six Revolutionary battlecruisers, with hundreds of other warships tight behind. Against the black of deep space, the bright orange plumes of their thrusters swept like a moving, luminous brush.
"Sir, this is very likely a trap," Duke's adjutant warned, clearly seeing more in the picture. "We need to be extremely cautious."
"Our opponent is Augustus Mengsk," said the adjutant—a young man with brown-black curls. "Not those thick-headed Kel-Morians."
"Bring the fleet to a halt." At the sound of Augustus's name, Duke's rage did not flare hotter; instead, a cold anger settled him.
The name Augustus Mengsk had gradually become a nightmare haunting many high officials of the Terran Confederacy, and even its navy's flag officers. First he destroyed the Dylarian Shipyards, seizing a large number of battlecruisers; then, with astonishing decisiveness, he pointed his blade straight at Tarsonis.
The Confederacy's grandees feared he would overturn their rule, while its admirals both feared and hated a man like Augustus. Yet thanks to the rebels, the navy's budget had swelled year by year; the officers' power grew, and the benefits they reaped grew with it.
"Launch the cloaked reconnaissance craft," Duke ordered.
"Colonel, the Governor of Mar Sara is requesting a communications link with the Norad III," the navigator suddenly reported.
"That Mar Sara pig!" Duke exploded.
Even so, he ultimately accepted the governor's connection.
"Colonel Duke—Augustus Mengsk—that damned traitor—is at the gates. They've encircled Redstone Citadel." A bloated, oil-slicked face filled the Norad III's main bridge display, turning Duke's stomach.
"Who's commanding this pack of rebels?" In Duke's mind, names of Revolutionary Army officers flickered one after another. "Jim Raynor of Shiloh, or 'Mad Dog' Tychus Findlay?"
"I can confirm it's Augustus Mengsk himself. Our unmanned reconnaissance drones captured the golden wolf banner flying above the rebel command center," the Governor of Mar Sara sobbed.
"Colonel Duke, you must come save me!"
"Your House is disgraced because of you, Governor Richard. Look at the idiocy you've managed: your people wear the latest powered armor and ride Terran Confederacy Marine Corps vehicles, yet in the end they're driven back in rout by rebels on motorcycles swinging fireplace pokers. In less than a week, you've lost most of Mar Sara.
"Hopeless. A total rout."
Edmund Duke and the Governor of Mar Sara clearly knew each other already; their acquaintance went back to the days when both nobles were young. Of course, that did nothing to lessen their mutual loathing.
"The Confederacy's domain spans the entire Koprulu Sector, and yet the Assembly still sends pigs, jackasses, and scale-bugs to run a colony—just because they're nobles."
Head held high, Duke looked down from on high with arrogant disdain at the governor's tear-streaked face. He knew Richard could no longer keep his post; the Lyon family behind him would, if anything, need to thank Duke for preserving their property on Mar Sara.
When nobles hear of the sufferings of the lower classes, they can squeeze out a few tears for the sake of their celebrated compassion. But when it's their own life and death on the line, the tears usually won't stop.
On Tarsonis, the Old Families demand exceptional ability from their chosen heirs—ability worthy of inheriting the family's power. But they cannot expect every member of the bloodline to be outstanding.
"Colonel." Behind the Governor of Mar Sara stood a nickel-plated alloy wall; to the right, a heavy lead door studded with rivets. Nearby stood fully armed personal guards rather than his suited aides and drunken military advisers.
This made it plain the governor was hiding in the underground refuge vault beneath the governor's mansion. All across Mar Sara, artillery thundered; inside the vault, silk carpets lay underfoot, and gold and silver vessels glittered with jewels.
"We can't hold much longer. The rebels' strike craft are carpet-bombing over our lines. Once Augustus Mengsk's people launch their general offensive, we're finished." He stopped crying as quickly as he had burst into sobs.
"How many do they have, exactly?" When Duke narrowed his triangular eyes, he looked like an exceptionally dangerous viper.
"At least two hundred thousand," the governor said, his sausage-thick lips trembling.
"Drone reconnaissance captured insignia from at least ten rebel divisions. They've also got large armored and mobile forces. They're not some band of armed Korhal IV farmers—they're a bona fide army."
"Nonsense." Duke didn't believe the governor's claims, but he still took them as a point of reference. He judged there were roughly fifty to one hundred thousand rebels on Mar Sara's surface.
"The rebels couldn't possibly have that many," Duke said.
Given the rebels possessed a certain amount of CMC powered armor, this could not be treated like an ordinary uprising. Ordinarily, a detachment of about 200 Terran Confederacy Marines could easily quash a city's revolt, and a single Marine battalion was enough to hold a fringe colony.
Since Angus Mengsk and his wolfish-ambitious sons fomented rebellion, a regional uprising was no longer something the local Marines could put down with ease.
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