Colonel Duke's command vehicle drove at the head of the marching column, with only one vanguard battalion ahead of it. This vanguard battalion had long been following two Marine brigades from Tychus Findlay's unit, but aside from capturing a few straggling Revolutionary Army soldiers and several scout vehicles, they had gained nothing.
Worse still, Tychus had ordered his troops to lay mines while retreating. That forced Alpha Squadron's pursuit to waste more time dealing with spider mines and various other automated sensor mines buried deep in the rust-colored sand, with casualties occurring from time to time.
The colonel's command vehicle was a Jaguar-57 armored command car. Its spacious cabin was large enough to accommodate ten staff officers. Inside were several radio stations and smart computers for maintaining contact with units at all levels; guns and coats hung along the walls.
At that moment, the command car was rolling with the marching column. Colonel Duke and several staff officers sat inside, stuffing their mouths with sandwiches of luncheon meat and lettuce while studying the operational map and keeping contact with subordinate forces.
At this season, darkness always came quickly. The sun sank at an unusually fast pace. As the blazing orb that scorched Mar Sara slipped beneath the horizon, the clouds above were suddenly set ablaze in fiery hues—only to vanish in a fleeting moment.
Once the sky fell fully dark, heavy clouds began pressing in from the horizon, and the once-scorching air turned cold.
With nightfall's sudden arrival, uneasy voices arose inside the command car. Some argued they should halt at once, establish a camp, and send out scouts or call for air support. Others contended that even with infrared and heat-sensing equipment, plunging deeper into unfamiliar wasteland in the dead of night was no different from suicide.
During this time, Duke clashed with the command system and staff officers. They insisted the army should establish camp outside the Desolate Gorge and wait until morning to bypass the complex terrain. Others proposed a different plan: using a transport ship to drop an elite force directly against the Revolutionary Army command center and seize Augustus Mengsk himself. After all, Augustus's Heaven's Devils unit had originally made its name through airborne operations.
To all this, Colonel Duke, sitting in the command car, grew increasingly impatient.
Even though night had fallen and the surroundings were utterly unfamiliar, Colonel Duke still stubbornly ordered Alpha Squadron to keep marching. To him, with the Revolutionary Army's command post already before his eyes, it was the time to strike quickly—otherwise Augustus would surely escape again.
In Duke's view, the Revolutionary Army's ragtag fleet barely had a trace of fighting strength, and their troops were nothing but worthless rabble. For Alpha Squadron, crushing a mob of hastily armed farmers was no harder than snapping the neck of a chick. As long as the Revolutionary Army's positions came within range of Alpha Squadron's railguns, everything would be over.
The officers, however, believed Edmund Duke lacked even the most basic military and tactical sense. He was adept at assaults, his style unchanging. Among all possible tactics, Duke always chose the one with the greatest destructive power and effect, never weighing his own side's losses.
The debate yielded no result, for Duke refused to heed any suggestion that did not let him launch an attack.
"Colonel, our aircraft can no longer provide us with reconnaissance or fire support of any kind. They must return to the nearest airfield to replenish compressed fuel and ammunition—and the nearest airfield is tens of thousands of kilometers away." While the staff officers' voices buzzed in Duke's ears, a radio from the rear delivered fresh bad news.
Duke had no choice but to accept it. He already knew the Confederacy fleet in Mar Sara's synchronous orbit was at a disadvantage against the Revolutionary Army's fleet, unable to provide the landing troops any support at all.
Meanwhile, the fleet's defeat was another reason driving Duke to push for a quick decision. He grew increasingly anxious, determined to finish the fight before the fleet was completely crushed and return to it as soon as possible.
"If there's any more bad news, then give it to me all at once." Duke never regretted any decision he made.
"Our vanguard—while pursuing Tychus's Heaven's Devils Marines—the 7th Brigade, discovered a new rebel force 260 kilometers ahead. They're heavily armed, and the 7th Brigade's advance is stalled."
"So those cowards finally dare to stand and fight? That's good news." Duke smiled as he heard it. What he feared most was the Revolutionary Army playing hide-and-seek with him.
"Alpha Squadron will crush them!"
...
At 17:00, the vanguard of Alpha Squadron, carrying out a pursuit mission, clashed with Hank Harnack's and Tychus Findlay's Revolutionary Army units at the bottleneck of the desolate canyon. Compared with the wider terrain farther up the canyon, the bottleneck was like a bottle's narrow neck: the space between the rock walls tightened rapidly, and at its narrowest the gap was only 30 meters.
It was like a pocket suddenly cinched shut, and Hank and Tychus's troops were precisely the cord pulling that pocket tight.
The Revolutionary Army's positions lay in the posterior two-thirds of the bottleneck, fewer than 32 km from the canyon exit, and beyond that stood the Fort Martin command center where Augustus Mengsk was located. In other words, if Harnack and Tychus's forces failed to hold this place, Mengsk would face the spearhead of Alpha Squadron directly.
The positions had been constructed by excavators and engineering vehicles using hardened-steel protective plates, concrete, and battlecruiser armor plating, with interspersed bunkers and two command centers that doubled as fortresses.
"Mengsk really knows how to make people do the hard labor; we're out here breaking our backs while he sits in the rear command center with that female agent and that nurse, living it up." In a bunker ringed with protective steel plates, Tychus Findlay sat on a stool, lighting a cigar; beside him stood a heavy machine gun.
"One redhead, one brunette."
The bunker was so cramped it could only hold the hulking Tychus and Hank in his power armor. Even standing in powered armor wouldn't tire someone much, but Tychus had dragged over a stool, sat down, and crossed his legs, which made the already tight space even less able to hold more people.
Although the two of them were the highest-ranking commanders present, their officers could never have imagined that Tychus and Harnack had just fought over that stool—and the victor was obvious.
The two scoundrels always saw eye to eye when doing dirty deeds, but when it came to splitting the spoils they immediately turned on each other.
"You think the boss thinks about women's asses and thighs the way you do?" Harnack was still angry about the earlier spat. "You'll pay for that sooner or later. Don't expect the boss to come rescue you like before when it happens!"
"He just wanted me to owe him a favor, you understand?" Tychus tapped his temple. "Those nobles only think in terms of transactions—everything's a trade, no real friendship."
"You're not seriously thinking there are brothers who'd die for one another in this world, are you? If I get caught by the Confederacy or whatever, will he actually risk everything to pull me out?" In any case, Tychus never trusted anyone; he didn't believe affection was stronger than gold.
"Ah? Kid."
"If it's the boss—if that man is Augustus Mengsk—then he would do that," Harnack said. "You piece of shit, if you dare betray us, I'll burn you to ash."
"Heh—" Tychus pushed himself to his feet. "I'm only risking my life for the money—"
"Shut up, I've heard that at least seven or eight times." Harnack cursed, then pointed to the observation slit at the front of the bunker. "They're coming."
"Pyromaniacs, time for a barbecue," he said over his unit's command channel.
"Light your matches."
...
In the darkness of night, flares lit up the sky. Fully armed soldiers of Alpha Squadron, clad in white power armor, charged across the sandy red ground toward the Revolutionary Army's positions in wave after wave.
Alpha Squadron in their white power armor and the Revolutionary Army soldiers in deep crimson power armor fired at each other. Nail rounds traveling at several times the speed of sound, steel copper-plated blunt rounds, and sharp depleted-uranium rounds filled the air in barrages as dense as sheets of rain.
In this narrow zone, more than twenty thousand soldiers fought, with several thousand firing at once along the extended front line. About two battalions of the Revolutionary Army were Harnack's Firebat units, their plasma flames forming walls of fire that lit up half the rock face.
These Firebat suits of power armor were co-designed by Chief Engineer Rory Swann and the Heaven's Devils' armor technician—after all, the latter had once taken part in the design and development of the Firebat power armor under Hiram Feek.
The Revolutionary Army's Firebat armor differed from the Confederacy's. They used an improved CMC-300 rather than the CMC-250. The armor's visor and breastplate were thickened, coated with heat-resistant plating, and for the sake of comfort, its plasma fuel tanks on the back were fitted with thermal insulation layers.
Reportedly, this same armor technician was also participating in the research projects personally planned by Augustus Mengsk for the "Reaper" power armor and the dual-turbine jump pack. According to the concept, a soldier wearing such armor would be able to scale cliffs over 30 meters high and fly through the air like a superhuman.
And at Colonel Hank Harnack's request, based on his own experience using Firebat armor, dual fuel tanks were added to increase endurance and prevent the embarrassment of flames cutting out mid-burn.
In addition, Swann outfitted the Revolutionary Army's Firebat and other flamethrower fuel tanks with fibrous incendiary filaments, enabling the flamethrowers to unleash even more powerful streams of blue plasma fire.
As Swann put it: "Blue, blazing bright."
Thus the flames spewed by the Revolutionary Army's flamethrower units all turned a brilliant blue. Their commander, Harnack, was obsessed with creating an epic conflagration and dedicated himself to making his flamethrowers into the most infamous arsonists.
In several of Harnack's battalions, the only recruitment requirement was whether a soldier would check the box on the survey form that said they had played with fire as a child.
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