Nine Behemoth-class Battlecruisers

Before Augustus, outside the bridge windows of the USS Loyalty, lay a vast and magnificent battlefield. The Nova Squadron warships and ships that had joined the Revolutionary Army were locked in a fierce battle with their comrades on the edge of the Char system. The imposing battlecruisers aimed their dense cannons at the enemy dozens of miles away, and every flash of fire in the barrage came from a Wraith or a transport ship.

Every warship and every individual showed no mercy to their former comrades, now enemies, like two fists colliding fiercely, again and again. Vast amounts of spaceship debris and wreckage were hurled far away by the shockwaves of the explosions, flying towards celestial bodies billions of miles away, until they were captured by the gravity of asteroids and planets.

Another salvo was fired, and two battlecruisers from the Nova Squadron, which had switched allegiance to the Revolutionary Army, damaged a Confederacy warship named Achilles. A terrifying flash appeared in the midsection of the Achilles, and its bright purple armor was instantly charred black.

The Achilles did not retreat, but bravely fought back against the Revolutionary Army's warships.

However, only six of the Nova Squadron battlecruisers remained loyal to the Confederacy and were still capable of fighting. After the Hyperion and two other Revolutionary Army battlecruisers turned around and joined the battle, the Confederacy warships were already at a disadvantage.

With an entire hostile Protoss Fleets right beside them, the Confederacy Fleets had lost all will to fight and began preparing to activate their warp drives and escape, one ship after another.

"Stop them," Augustus commanded over his Fleets's communication channel.

The Hyperion joined the siege of the Achilles and locked it in a tight chase with two other battlecruisers, preventing it from immediately entering warp mode. Opening the hyperspace passage rashly under the intense interference of plasma energy flow could very likely trigger a terrible disaster.

Normally, the captain who issues this order will not even have the opportunity to be brought to a military court for trial.

The captain of the Achilles was determined to use a short jump to avoid the attack of the Revolutionary Army warships, but the warship was severely damaged by a salvo from the Hyperion's gun corps close to its stern, and its relatively outdated armor failed to protect it.

Within ten minutes, the exchange of fire between the two warships turned into a rout of the Confederacy Fleets. Large amounts of armor fragments and shipwrecks drifted into the distance with the wakes of the fleeing warships and the spacetime vortexes that shimmered with colorful radiation, like messages in bottles drifting along ocean currents. The debris stream, composed of fragments and wreckage, stretched for dozens of miles.

As Augustus refocused his attention on the captain of the Loyalty amidst the tremors of the bridge deck, the space war was drawing to a close. Four Confederacy warships had escaped the pursuit and left the Char system, while the Achilles and its sister ship Epeios, were unable to escape the battlefield with the other Confederacy warships due to being surrounded and severely damaged.

The Loyalty did not join the battle. Augustus's forces only stormed the upper decks and command mezzanine. The middle and lower decks remained under the control of the Confederacy crew, who, led by some brave officers, were fiercely resisting the Protoss attack and even trying to retake the ship.

"Captain, if you can still listen to what I have to say, then I must tell you, your Fleets has been defeated," Augustus said calmly, in a tone that left no room for doubt.

"Order your men to surrender immediately to avoid unnecessary casualties. I pity the Confederacy soldiers who are still fighting bravely, and if they surrender now, I will certainly give them the opportunity to return home when the war ends."

"You demon! Who threw you from hell here?" Captain Joe of the Loyalty sat on the ground, raising his thick-bearded face to stare intently at Augustus.

"Angus Mengsk and Katherine Mengsk have produced a terrorist and extremist leader. How many more people have you killed in the war you brought about? How many more will you kill before you are satisfied?"

"You are the demons. Do you remember Korhal? This feud is not over. Do all those who remained there deserve to die?" Before Augustus could speak, his personal guard captain, Faraday, angrily raised his fist.

"I'm tired of telling others that iron, blood, sweat, and sacrifice are the necessary price for change. If you open your eyes, you should see the peasants of Shiloh, Halsen, and Altera starving because of the Confederacy's exorbitant taxes. You should see that since the mid-25th century, the laws of the Terran Confederacy have been written, without exception, to protect the interests of the rulers." Augustus's voice seemed to have some kind of magic, so much so that everyone unconsciously looked at him when he spoke.

"The number of people who died because the Confederacy refused to provide any assistance to refugees in the Edge World displaced by the Zerg invasion was tens of millions of times greater than the civilian casualties caused by the Revolutionary Army and the Confederacy Army."

"It's all because of you rebels! Without you, how could we not have saved those refugees?" The captain didn't seem to believe his own words, as his demeanor paled in comparison to Augustus's.

Augustus simply laughed it off, which was the unified narrative of the Confederacy military and official media. All the blame lay with the revolutionaries and rebels; if the Confederacy bore any responsibility, it was that their control over the people and their suppression of the rebels were far from sufficient.

Since Angus Mengsk declared independence in Korhal IV in 2489, three years have passed since this heated revolution began. The people of the Confederacy often see news of clashes between government forces and rebels at outposts and space stations on some extremely remote Edge World, and the conflict between the two sides has gradually become the norm.

"This guy is like a rock in a latrine, both smelly and stubborn." Tychus used the words Augustus once used to describe himself to describe this Confederacy captain.

"Give him a couple of slaps, and he'll behave immediately."

"Colonel Haller," Augustus said, turning to Jack Haller beside him.

Hearing Augustus's words, Haller nodded, the gold in his eyes shining even brighter.

"I am the captain, this is my order." Under Haller's mental control, Captain Joe of the Loyalty twisted his neck uncomfortably, his lips trembling as he fiddled with his earpiece.

"The war is over, and resistance is pointless. I order you to surrender to any enemy you encounter. It was my mistake that led to this defeat, and the blame should fall on me," he said.

"I order you to lay down your weapons."

Joe's orders echoed across the decks and cabins of the Loyalty, having a particularly strong impact on the Resocialized Soldier. Even the Confederacy officers with their own independent judgment quickly realized that the Loyalty had become an isolated island in space, and that before long, large numbers of Rebels and Protoss would board the ship in the now-fallen dock.

Augustus glanced again at the trembling captain of the Loyalty, considering the middle-aged man's stance in uttering those words. Not everyone could abandon everything to join the revolution, especially when the Revolutionary Army's victory was still uncertain. After all, those who joined the Revolutionary Army with fervent zeal were only a minority.

For men who have already started families and established careers, this usually means that they may have to abandon their wives and children and follow the rebels, whose future seems uncertain, to places light-years away or even further away for many years.

"Faraday, lock him up," Augustus.

"Captain, I will never execute anyone who surrenders. If you are unwilling to abandon your past service to the Revolutionary Army, you will also have the opportunity to go home—after the Confederacy is overthrown, of course."

Augustus would not refuse to incorporate the Confederacy's regular army into his own, since they were, after all, professional soldiers.

As Faraday waved for two Marshal Guard soldiers to take the captain of the Loyalty away, Augustus leaned over the control panel on the bridge of the warship, where the portraits of the captains of the Revolutionary Army warships such as the Hyperion and the Thunder Child appeared.

After a few minutes, the serial numbers of the four Nova Squadron that fought for the Revolutionary Army in this battle appeared in the battle sequence on the screen. They were all captains whom Haller had controlled or turned over during his years of leadership of the Nova Squadron using his powerful Psionics and psionic abilities, and who had secretly sworn allegiance to the Liberty rather than the Confederacy.

"What did you do to the captains of these warships?" Augustus asked Haller in a low voice, not believing that he had won over these captains, who commanded at least several thousand men, through personal charisma alone.

"I cannot forcibly change their thinking and self-perception with mental power alone." Haller walked behind Augustus, his hands behind his back. "I can only temporarily take over the control of their brains over their bodies through mental power; I cannot directly distort their thoughts."

"What I can do is, like the neurotransmission of Resocialized Soldier, subtly add different memories to these people to distort their self-perception," he explained to Augustus. "Over time, these people will believe that they are loyal to me, not to the Confederacy Naval Command or the Confederacy itself."

"But it's dangerous, and it doesn't always work, otherwise you would have taken control of the entire Nova Squadron by now," Augustus.

Without prior contact, premeditation, or detailed planning, Jack Haller sided with Augustus. Originally, Augustus believed that even capturing just one or two battlecruisers would be a stroke of incredible luck.

"That's right, I haven't succeeded many times, and those with strong minds can find discrepancies between the transplanted memories and the original memories," Haller said truthfully. "They may also discover someday that someone has added extra memories to them."

"In other words, it's not stable, and it will take a long time to control them." Augustus nodded.

"Therefore, we should replace the captains of those warships, because they might betray us." Haller had naturally adopted the identity and stance of the Revolutionary Army.

"Of course." Augustus would not allow a captain whose loyalty could not be guaranteed to command a battlecruiser that was invaluable to the Revolutionary Army, and most of the crew would have to be replaced. Soon, these battlecruisers that once belonged to the Nova Squadron would be full of the Revolutionary Army soldiers from Korhal and Ma Sara.

Those Confederacy soldiers who originally belonged to the Nova Squadron had to prove their loyalty to be incorporated into the Revolutionary Army's combat ranks, and this had to be confirmed by deep mind reading by Psionics within the Revolutionary Army. This was an extremely difficult task, as at least 40,000 to 50,000 Nova Squadron soldiers surrendered, while the Revolutionary Army had fewer than 30 Psionics.

He tapped on the console and saw a communication from a Nova Squadron warship, a Confederacy Behemoth Battlecruiser named Eris.

"Augustus, I helped the Protoss capture this battlecruiser. My God, you can't imagine how fierce the battle was. The captain of this ship was even willing to bury his own ship to stop us." Raynor's image appeared on the control panel screen.

"Fortunately, Tassadar's Templar Knights beheaded him. What a hero, it's a pity he was an enemy."

"I am Duke. The plan went smoothly. I led those Protoss to wipe out all the Nova Squadron that dared to block our way." Duke's image appeared, and this time his arrogant voice didn't sound as bad to Augustus.

"We are clearing the remaining resistance from the decks and compartments, and many are trying to escape using the battlecruiser's lifeboats," he said arrogantly.

"These ships don't have warp engines; they can only wait to die in Char."

"Contact these ships. If they're willing to surrender, I won't leave them here," Augustus told Duke.

"Received--" Duke's avatar disappeared, and he went back to completing Augustus's task.

At this very moment, on the main screen of the bridge, cameras and sensors are aimed at the Achilles and Epeios. The assault boats and landing craft dispatched by the Hyperion, Thunder Child, and Norad III are still trying to approach the two ships powered by laser cannons, but are constantly being forced back by the firepower of the laser cannons.

The crew of Achilles and Epeios did not give up the fight, and although they were no longer able to perform a warp jump, most of the battlecruiser's weapon systems were still functioning normally.

These two battlecruisers had become mobile fortresses, and breaching their interiors was no easy task.

"Achilles and Epeios will be ours sooner or later," Haller said with a smile.

"Even a fool could see that." Tychus said, taking a box of high-end cigars from the filing cabinet on the bridge of the Loyalty, secretly calculating how much good stuff he could loot from this battlecruiser.

"What are the Zerg doing?" Augustus checked the radar surveillance image of the Loyalty and found no Zerg life signals detected. "It seems the Zerg are busy attacking Aiur and have no time to deal with us."

At this moment, six Nova Squadron battlecruisers with deep purple paint and shining Nova insignia had appeared outside the bridge, with two more on the right. Once Augustus complete control of these battlecruisers, the three warships he had brought from Antiga would become a Fleets of twelve warships.

With the addition of the original warships, this means that Augustus now has the strength of two Confederacy naval squadrons, not to mention that Tassadar's Fleets will accompany him.

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