Messenger of Justice

January 4, 2492.

Montcato Town, a Geladi City, at dawn.

This is a town that arose from oasis agriculture. The developed irrigation industry and the use of giant agricultural machinery made the alluvial fan area at the foot of this giant crater one of Haj's main food production areas. It is these scattered agricultural and industrial areas that provide the city with food and raw materials.

The surrounding mountain ranges provide Haj for Montcato Town and the Geladi City behind it from the powerful winds that can whip up houses and livestock, serving as both a natural barrier and part of the local exotic landscape.

This place was once one of the few decent natural landscapes in Haj that could be featured on postcards, because elsewhere it was either desert or endless craters.

However, when the New Year arrived, all the good things were gone.

The Zerg attacked the town at midnight on January 3rd, while people were still asleep.

Countless screaming, nightmarish monsters descended from the sky, their enormous, grotesque mouths and bright red, shield-shaped crests crashing into the peaceful town like a torrent from the mountains. The cries of these hideous creatures seemed to come from every imaginable fantasy of alien monsters in horror movies, the shrieks of ghosts.

Initially, only a few people realized they were under attack. By the time the town's sheriff got through to the local garrison, the streets were teeming with ferocious skinning dogs and writhing, snake-like creatures.

The Swarm slaughtered over six thousand people in a single night, leaving fewer than two hundred townspeople to survive through the wreckage of early Colonial Era ships and weapons at a Confederacy outpost. They built a last line of defense with massive agricultural machinery and harvesters, struggling to survive in their desperate situation.

On this morning, just as the first rays of dawn shone through the firing ports of the bunker in the center of Montcato Town, which had once been the cockpit of a colonial Mothership, onto the bloodshot-eyed people, the clanging and clattering of Zerg carapaces and spikes colliding against each other rang out once more.

That was Swarm on the move, a group of agile and well-organized monstrous creatures. As they advanced, they were like insects traversing a field in summer, buzzing as they swept across the ridges. The smooth exoskeleton of each Zerg reflected a magnificent metallic luster in the sunlight, and their thin, vein-like wings vibrated in the air, making a crackling sound.

The streets were already a scene of devastation, with streetlights lying across the middle of the road, and broken glass, rubble, and human corpses gnawed to pieces everywhere. The postures of the dead varied; some had their necks bitten off by Zergling that jumped onto their necks as they walked along the street, while others were torn to pieces by roaring Hydralisk.

Blood stained the streets.

These hideous alien creatures, resembling something between reptiles and insects, were completely foreign to the people of Montcato Town. They had only heard snippets of them on the UNN news network's radio programs, but never imagined that such a remote planet Haj would have Zerg.

In just over twenty hours, those creatures, seemingly emerging from a nightmare, have brought back too many painful memories for the people here.

The town's residents, who hadn't slept all night, picked up their last weapons: grenade launchers from the police station, electromagnetic pistols, shotguns, and even the sickles that farmers used to weed.

These weapons gave these farmers, who had never received professional military training, some ability to fight back against the Zerg. Zerg it weren't for the harsh winds of Haj and the agricultural labor that forged the townspeople's strong physiques and tenacious will, they wouldn't have been able to hold on until now.

Mayor Gray of Montcato Town was once a soldier and interstellar adventurer. He had been to many places in the Koprulu Sector, where he had met the profit-driven Kel-Morian and the Umojan who talked about democracy and freedom. He had met the most vicious and the most upright people.

Mayor Gray had dealt with illegal colonists, mercenaries, Scavengers, junk dealers, and space pirates; he knew all sorts of people, and his eventful life was enough to write a biography. But Mayor Gray had never seen these hideous monsters before him.

"If Manan Seres wants to punish the disrespectful, she can punish me instead of the people in this town." Mayor Gray walked past the defensive line made up of a dozen agricultural harvesters and cranes, constantly encouraging the armed townspeople with his words.

The town's Confederacy Magistrate heroically sacrificed his life when the Zerg arrived, and now Mayor Gray is the only commander here. "Hold on for one more day, the army will be here. Don't give up, for your families and children, don't give up!"

"We must keep living!"

In the Grandi region, Voodoo is a highly influential sect, almost rivaling Christianity. Because Voodoo priests held a witchcraft ceremony outside Montcato Town just as the New Year approached, many believed that the Zerg invasion was related to Manan.

No one responded to Mayor Gray's words; everyone had been fighting all night and was extremely exhausted.

Even today, Mayor Gray still finds it unbelievable that these hastily constructed buildings could withstand the Zerg army for so long. The only explanation is that after easily invading Montcato Town, the main Zerg force turned its attack on the city, leaving these neglected people to struggle here.

Expecting these people, who tremble at the sight of the Zerg, to withstand the Swarm's attack is simply a pipe dream, and their ammunition is almost exhausted. If the Confederacy garrison in Grandi doesn't send some more men soon, the rest of them will have to fight the Zerg with their Zerg.

However, Mayor Gray already knew in his heart that reinforcements were unlikely to come. This time, the enemy was not just some space pirates or small-scale rebels, but the Zerg, a vast swarm of Zerg that devoured everything.

Mayor Gray looked up at the sky, where the enormous Overlord seemed to be right overhead. No one had ever taught the mayor anything about the Zerg, but he was convinced that these giant creatures in the sky were directing the entire Swarm.

As the buzzing sound grew closer, Mayor Gray and his men could almost smell the stench emanating from the gaping maws of the Zerg, dripping with saliva and venomous liquid. The smaller monsters at the forefront were nimbly leaping back and forth among the walls and rubble of the ruins, occasionally letting out piercing screams.

They looked like coyotes with ringworm, exceptionally ugly.

Today, Mayor Gray noticed that the attacking Zerg were no longer as orderly as before. Zerg would frequently stop along the way to devour human corpses on the ground, and would even fight each other for a piece of meat, creating a bloody scene.

But this was not good news for Mayor Gray and his colony; the Zerg were no longer as orderly as before, but they were also much hungrier.

The first to fire were the few remaining C-7 electromagnetic guns in the colony, obsolete weapons that should have been discarded by the Confederacy army, but which had become powerful weapons in the hands of these people.

The Terrans's weapons are not ineffective against the Zerg's carapace; what the townspeople lack now is aiming accuracy. Against large, densely packed Zerg, even haphazard aiming can result in a hit, but now it's very difficult to hit the exceptionally agile Zergling.

Mayor Gray grabbed his double-barreled shotgun, which had been with him for many years, and fired into the gap between the tractor and the thresher. He fired more than a dozen shots but missed every time, as if the Zergling he was aiming at was faster than the bullet.

A few lucky individuals or experienced hunters might manage to shoot one or two Zergling, but this wouldn't have much impact on the overall situation on the battlefield.

As the Zergling climbed up the shelf of a large seed transport truck, the sound of its claws scraping against the steel chilled the townspeople to the bone. Even from a distance of a freight truck, Mayor Gray could hear the Zergling's excited purring.

This reminded Mayor Gray of a dog begging for food and a cat playing with a mouse; this time, humans were nothing more than meat in the mouths of the Zerg.

Some people began to cry; all their courage had been exhausted by the nightmarish yesterday. Everyone knew that once the Zerg crossed the barrier erected by the vehicles, even a Zergling not much larger than a large dog could easily reap the lives of dozens or even more people.

Mayor Gray gritted his teeth and roared at the coward who had disrupted morale, but the next moment a Fenris Zergling with a bright green shell leaped into the crowd and wreaked havoc like a wolf among sheep.

The closest person to the Zergling was a middle-aged man carrying a semi-automatic rifle. He wore antique-rimmed glasses and had prominent muscles and a robust physique. This man was the blacksmith at the town's school, still using techniques from centuries ago to forge farm tools and furniture.

He was a generous man who used to drink with Mayor Gray.

But the Zergling simply lunged forward and seized the blacksmith, cruelly tearing him to pieces with its sharp teeth and claws. The man died almost without uttering a sound.

Then it leaped from the corpse, arched its back, and pounced on the next victim, tearing a boy who was defending alongside the adults in two at the waist, as if ripping a rag. More Fenris Zergling jumped down, mercilessly reaping human lives.

"No!! It's gnawing on my leg! Ahhh!"

"Help me! Help me!"

The screams, one after another, further shattered the townspeople's will; the desperate wails sounded like something no human could utter.

Despair did not break the Hemingway-esque tough guy, Mayor Gray. He charged at a Zergling that was biting a woman, trying to get its attention by shouting.

The Fenris Zergling, which was nibbling at the woman's soft face, was attracted by Mayor Gray's shout. It abandoned its prey and leaped at him, each leap reaching six or seven feet high, moving forward as if flying.

"Damn bastard!" Mayor Gray stopped and fired at the Zerg, but both shots missed. By the time the mayor was about to reload and fire again, the Zergling was only inches away from him.

Mayor Gray had not yet given up. He drew a dagger that had been with him for over thirty years and prepared to fight the Zergling hand-to-hand.

Just then, the roar of a fighter jet reached Mayor Gray's ears. It was a golden-red Wraith diving towards the ground, followed by at least twenty Wraith, Avenger fighter jets, and APOD transport ships. The bright ice-blue contrail resembled the wings of a blue phoenix.

The beautiful Wraith spun around and fired several orange-red beams of light from the 25mm pulse laser cannons under its wings and belly towards the ground. After a burst of intense heat, the Zergling in front of Mayor Gray was immediately burned to ashes by the laser.

The Wraith flew very low, almost passing right over Mayor Gray's head.

He recognized the insignia on the fighter jet's tail stabilizer almost instantly—a powerful, golden arm encircling a whip against the jet's gleaming deep red base paint, with a glittering five-pointed star between the arm and the whip.

The Korhal Revolutionary Army.

"Look how beautiful that fighter jet is!" No matter how much the UNN news channels had smeared this army in the past, in Mayor Gray's eyes, they were the saviors of himself and the townspeople.

"It's Revolutionary Army warplane! They've come to rescue us!"

Five more Wraith jets flew overhead, and the Zerg in the crowd burned and fell to the ground as they were swept by laser pulse beams.

The survivors were stunned. They looked up at the sky in disbelief, some cheering and others weeping. They might not recognize that these were the infamous Korhal rebels and not regular troops of the Terran Confederacy, but they knew that these were human warplanes, human armies.

Two APOD-33 transport ships, painted in the same gold and red, tore through the sky and landed among the people amidst the roar of their engines and the gale-force winds whipped up by their thrusters. One after another, Goliath Combat Robot stepped out from the open hatches with heavy steps, their rotating automatic cannons sweeping over the remaining Zergling, a torrent of caseless bullets like a roaring steel flood.

A ferocious Fenris Zergling was about to pounce on a terrified child, but it was immediately mowed down by bullets from its 30mm cannon.

A modified Goliath Combat Robot used a diamond drill on its modified automated multi-functional arm to smash the crest and brain of a Hydralisk, then stomped to death a Fenris Zergling that had been shot down by machine gun fire.

A group of the Revolutionary Army soldiers, fully armed in red Power Armor, led a group of soldiers who stretched out their hands to reveal a black panda head armband on their right arm, making an attack gesture.

"Kill all these insects!" The Revolutionary Army waved his powerful right hand.

"All civilians, board the ship immediately! We are the Revolutionary Army!"

"I repeat, we are the Revolutionary Army."

Although my draft progress is a bit slow, I'd still appreciate a few votes. I'd like to reach the milestone of 30,000 votes.

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