When Alpha Squadron's scattered infantry lines charged the Revolutionary Army's positions under the cover of Arclite Tanks and Goliath combat walkers, they were immediately blasted in the face by the Revolutionary Army flamethrower units with searing blue plasma.
When Alpha Squadron's self-propelled artillery and railguns opened fire, the rumbling cannonade echoed throughout the canyon like the roar of Thor himself. Electromagnetically accelerated kinetic shells crashed down onto the Revolutionary Army's lines, throwing up fountains of sand hundreds of feet high.
The first round of shelling inflicted heavy casualties on the Revolutionary Army positions, and also caused considerable friendly fire against many of the resocialized soldiers who had already surged into the lines.
Of course, Alpha Squadron's artillery commander acted as though nothing had happened.
Meanwhile, hundreds of Wraith fighters and heavy bombers converted from APOD-33 transports immediately took off from a military airfield that Augustus Mengsk had ordered built in advance near the desolate gorge.
In the eyes of the soldiers on both sides, those aircraft were like firebirds riding on orange flames. They pressed through the anti-air missiles of Alpha Squadron's Goliath combat walkers and bombarded the Confederacy's artillery positions with such intensity that the rumbling cannons fell silent at once.
Two hours later, Alpha Squadron's assault forces finally began to withdraw, leaving behind hundreds upon hundreds of corpses in power armor. The Revolutionary Army did not fare much better: lacking sufficient power armor and heavy weapons, even the most elite among them had to pay an even bloodier price to repel Alpha Squadron's resocialized assault.
After the first offensive, Alpha Squadron rested for only a dozen minutes before launching another fierce attack.
This time it was led personally by Colonel Edmund Duke, who commanded the assault troops. He was entirely unaware that a massive rebel force had already blocked the canyon entrance and was advancing at full speed toward his rear.
...
At 04:00 on the 20th, a few brilliant meteors streaked past the window of the command island inside Fort Martin command center—what remained of the shattered keel of an Alpha Squadron Behemoth-class battlecruiser.
Though just hours earlier the sky had still been thick with dark clouds, no rain had fallen here. The storm clouds only rumbled with thunder before being blown farther away.
Augustus could no longer remember how long it had been since he had closed his eyes for any real stretch of time. No one bothered urging him to rest or sleep for a few hours anymore. Outside, the battlefield thundered with artillery, and even Revolutionary soldiers without defensive duty in their barracks could hardly fall asleep.
Less than 32 kilometers from Fort Martin, the Desolate Gorge battlefield had, after more than ten hours of brutal fighting, turned into a true slaughterhouse—blood flowing like rivers, corpses littering the land.
Since 18:00 on the 19th, when Alpha Squadron's vanguard pursuing force clashed with the troops of Harnack and Tychus, and by around 22:00 when eight main Revolutionary divisions led by Raynor and Lundstein struck the rear of Alpha Squadron's army and completed an encirclement of several Marine divisions, casualties had skyrocketed from the initial hundreds and thousands. The numbers now multiplied geometrically, far exceeding all losses the Revolutionary Army had suffered since its first official founding.
In total, the Confederacy and the Revolutionary Army had committed about 150,000 troops onto less than a few dozen square kilometers. Alpha Squadron fielded about 20,000, while the Revolutionary side had deployed roughly 15,000 Korhal Revolutionary Army First Division veterans, more than 78,000 fresh troops from three Deadman's Port divisions, about 10,000 from two Mar Sara local brigades, and nearly 40,000 from three mainline Revolutionary divisions—veterans of the Defense of Korhal—that Warfield had brought back from Umoja.
In the repeated swings of attack and defense, some units' frontlines overlapped. Once they ran out of ammunition and lost contact with their supply units, close-quarters melee even broke out in places. Alpha Squadron's artillery units, positioned behind their own lines without cover, suffered heavy losses—they could hardly fix bayonets onto their railguns.
The Revolutionary Army possessed more than 40,000 sets of CMC-200 powered armor and a smaller number of CMC-300s, most originating from Umoja itself and several highly autonomous affiliated colonies. The rest were captured stock. The remainder of the troops had to make do with exoskeleton armor offering far weaker protection.
Aside from existing Arclite Tanks, Goliath combat walkers, and a few Rattlesnake prototype vehicles, and other than a handful of electromagnetic cannons and unmanned bombers supported by Umoja, the Revolutionary Army's holdings of heavy firepower weapons were negligible.
"Edmund Duke abandoned the idea of breaking through northward against the lines of Raynor and Lundstein an hour ago." Amid the constant clatter of keyboards and radios inside the command center, a new voice finally sounded, like shards of ice clashing on an early spring river.
"Now Duke has abandoned the Marine forces pinned down by Major General Raynor, and instead is leading Alpha Squadron's elite guard and fleet troopers south—launching an assault on the bottleneck gorge held by Harnack and Tychus, intending to break out from there." Since Augustus' former adjutant had been killed leading the reserve force to support the bottleneck defenses, his Ghost bodyguard Sarah Kerrigan was temporarily acting as adjutant.
"Duke wants to challenge me to a fight to the death." Even now, Augustus could still recall the face of that young adjutant.
He had been a graduate of the Korhal Officer Academy—part of its first, and also last, batch of Revolutionary officers. He died from a delayed-fuse aerial bomb at just twenty-five years old. He was the eldest son of his family, with a fiancée already pregnant.
He was one among the tens of thousands of Revolutionary soldiers who died today—nothing special. The only difference was that Augustus remembered his name.
No battle could ever pass without deaths. After all, the highly re-socialized Confederacy forces were nothing like Mar Sara's planetary defense forces or civilian militias, who had outdated equipment, lax training, and weak fighting spirit—sometimes not even as good as a flock of pigeons. Alpha Squadron was, after all, a professional military, and re-socialized soldiers were no militia.
"The remaining warships of Alpha Squadron are regrouping on a frozen world at the very edge of the Sara system, but my fleet still holds the advantage. That means Duke can no longer return to his fleet." Augustus' voice was hoarse; from staring too long at the same holographic projection map, his vision had grown blurred.
In the past, Augustus might still have found the mood of a noble to enjoy wine, black tea, and expensive boxed chocolate. Now he only kept pouring military-issue coffee down his throat to sharpen his focus and stay alert.
"As long as Duke can drive off Harnack and Tychus, then before Fort Martin we'll have no defenses left except a few minefields," Augustus continued. "At that point, Duke could smash the rebel command center in one stroke, throwing them into chaos. At the same time, he could bring part of Alpha Squadron's troops through Fort Martin' command center's aerospace port and return to high orbit."
"The bottleneck position Harnack and the others are holding is absolutely critical. It's the throat of the battlefield," he said. "In the time ahead, that bottleneck will inevitably become the center of this entire campaign."
"The casualty situation at the bottleneck is so severe that some companies or even battalions have only a dozen men left, and the last reinforcing reserve departed three hours ago." Kerrigan, as a powerful psionic, could perfectly fulfill the role of adjutant; her thinking was clever and flexible. More importantly, Kerrigan knew what Augustus was thinking—she knew what he needed and what he intended to do.
No one could be more understanding than a mind-reading psionic.
At that moment an information soldier hurried in: "Colonel Harnack requests reinforcements. Alpha Squadron has launched a new assault and has already captured nearly two-thirds of our positions."
"Duke's Alpha Squadron has been besieged for nearly eleven hours; they're prepared to fight desperately." Augustus held his breath, paced a few steps, then stopped.
"I remember we no longer have any reserves available." Saying this, Augustus turned to Kerrigan. In a large corps-level engagement, the side whose reserves are exhausted first is clearly the one in difficulty and at a disadvantage.
"All the reserve units in Fort Martin have already departed. Right now in the Marshal's command there remain only Corporal Faraday's guard battalion, the information company, and the logistics company," Kerrigan told Augustus. "Besides that, we have an engineering corps."
"And the staff," Augustus added.
"The command must not fall back. If we can hold on until Raynor's forces cut off and annihilate the remainder of Alpha Squadron's troops, we will win the campaign," she said.
Immediately, Augustus issued orders across all channels of the Fort Martin command center: "Chief of Staff and personnel from information warfare and support departments remain. All other departments—including everyone in the engineering corps—report to the barracks and armory to receive your powered armor and Gauss rifles, regardless of rank from Private Second Class to Staff Lieutenant Colonel."
"When you collect your weapons, submit your last will and payroll. If you do not wish to go to the front, please submit a written statement explaining the circumstances."
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