This is the Empire
The Tal'darim Fleets is advancing towards the core of the Gebus System. Once it reaches Gebus, it will immediately open fire and destroy everything without hesitation before moving on to its next target.
Until the high lords of Taldarim believed that humanity had received enough revenge, or that they considered the matter utterly insignificant.
The human settlers of Gohbus were unaware that the shadow of death was looming over Gohbus, but even if they had, the frenzied struggle for seats on the transport ships and the resulting riots would only have intensified.
"Those who cause trouble, cut in line, and disobey boarding regulations, even if you've already boarded the ship, for God's sake, I swear I'll kick you damned selfish bastards, scum, and cowards into the mud with my steel boots and throw you to the Protoss."
"Children, women, and the elderly come first, then everyone else."
In the largest central square of New Columbia City, Gohbus, swirling yellow sand rose and fell, stinging the skin. Dozens of modified APOD-33 transport ships, their distinctive paint schemes and markings identifying them as mercenaries, stood guard.
Thousands of New Columbia City were queuing to board the ship, while Remy Harris, one of the mercenary leaders, directed his men to maintain order. The mercenaries, known for their ruthless efficiency, showed no mercy to these civilians; even dissatisfaction with the boarding order would provoke their shouts and insults. They were accustomed to letting their bayonets and bullets do the talking.
Such swift and decisive action had an immediate effect; even the mayor had to wait in line to leave Gohbus.
Amidst the swirling yellow sand, fully loaded transport ships rose into the air amidst the expectant gazes of countless people, only to transform into a cold, distant star in the sky.
"Gravin, if the Terran Empire's Fleets doesn't arrive soon, the brothers will all be going to die here sooner or later," Harris whispered to Hill.
"We are mercenaries, and our largest ships are gunboats converted from Mammoth-class Mothership. Their specifications are comparable to battlecruisers, but their combat capabilities are far inferior."
"What are the other ships to the Protoss, harmless cruise yachts?" he said to his old friend.
"I bet the Emperor of the Terran Empire doesn't intend to fight these vicious Protoss to the death in Gohbus. If it were me, having just become Emperor, my first priority would be to defend the few territories I already hold, not to rush into an attack."
"So you're not the emperor." Hill twitched his eyebrows above his sunglasses.
"You'll be a mercenary your whole life."
"Excellent, this couldn't be better." Harris grinned, showing no signs of the tension of carrying out a dangerous mission: "Being a mercenary is absolutely exhilarating."
"Boss, those children have woken up. We can't let them stay with us." At this moment, a mercenary with a blond mustache walked over, holding the hand of a blonde girl who looked to be about ten years old.
In the Koprulu Sector, mercenaries live a life where they constantly risk their lives. Even the most experienced former Confederacy veterans often make mistakes. Deaths are common, and fighting with children is utterly reckless.
"Are you Delta Squadron Ambrok?" Hill's mind flashed through the girl's file.
A New Sydney, Delta Squadron's mother had passed away, and her father was an alcoholic and abusive. She was forced to work in a factory at a very young age to make ends meet. Apparently, the Chimera Pirates found Delta Squadron and took her to the shipping depot in Gohbus, intending to sell her for a good price in the Core World.
"I am Delta Squadron." The girl's expression was numb and indifferent, surprisingly calm, her beautiful deep blue eyes reflecting everyone.
Level 7 Psionics are extremely rare. These Psionics possess abilities beyond telepathy, such as teleportation or creating fire out of thin air.
Hill thought that if he had a daughter that age, he would never want her to suffer such injustice.
"Child, we will soon put you and your companions on the spaceship. The people of the Terran Empire will come to pick you up then." Hill was always patient with everyone.
"I've heard that the Empire treats people with telepathic abilities quite well; the Empress of the Terran Empire is a Psionics."
"Thank you, thank you." Delta Squadron gripped her collar tightly.
"You're much better than those New Columbia who only know how to be grateful to the Emperor," Hill said with a smile, urging the mercenary beside him to help Delta Squadron and the other two children onto the ship.
As Hill glanced at the New Columbia City lining up to board the transport ship, he suddenly heard a loud roar.
A transport ship that was accelerating upwards suddenly caught fire and, after a moment of trembling, shattered into countless fireballs.
Amidst gasps of surprise from the crowd, multiple Tal'darim fighters appeared like black swords piercing through the hazy clouds. Like ghosts emerging from the mist, these Protoss fighters, imbued with the aesthetics of war, combined exquisite elegance with aggression. Their tails were shrouded in a blood-red light, and they seemed to vanish in a flash, appearing before everyone in the blink of an eye.
The transport ships that were leaving Gohbus immediately became targets of the Tal'darim fighters, and every human ship became prey.
At this moment, the mercenaries' fighter jets, seemingly cobbled together from a pile of junk, also appeared. First, there were five Confederacy Avenger fighter jets from the Guild Wars, followed by more and more advanced Wraith fighter. In the blink of an eye, the sky became a battlefield where the pilots of both sides fought to the death.
"They're attacking civilian boats, they're inhuman!" Harris cursed, though he didn't consider himself a good person, he couldn't bring himself to do such a thing.
"Keep boarding! Don't stop! Staying on the ground is certain death!" Hill shouted, ordering his men to shove the terrified civilians onto the spaceship.
"The Protoss only sent a few ships; they're useless except for intimidation."
The next moment, a circular warship with three red rotors leaped into the air above New Columbia; even its rotors at the edges were much larger than the mercenaries' transport ships.
The Taldarim Mother Mothership, the Blood Throne of the Death Fleet.
Long before the Protoss Empire of Aiur had placed its Mothership Fleets Protoss museum for admiration, having lost its drive for progress and technological advancement, their distant relatives, the Tal'darim, salvaged these warships from the Protoss Empire's abandoned colonies and lost worlds in the Milky Way Galaxy and used them for their own purposes.
The purpose of deploying the Mothership is to seize control of the battlefield. It is like a throne hanging high above the enemy's head, and the energy dome projected by its delta rotors flows with a blood-like light. As soon as it appears, the humans below are plunged into extreme panic.
As soon as the Taldarim commander on the Mothership orders the main guns to be fired, New Columbia will be reduced to ashes in an instant.
"Shit—" Hill's face twisted in pain. "How could it be so fast?"
"I should make your stingy rooster's beak out of gold." Harris stared intently at the colossal object in the sky; compared to it, the mercenaries' prized spaceship was nothing more than a small yacht.
"The Protoss Fleets didn't just blast this planet to smithereens, but instead sailed into the atmosphere to show off. Why...?" He no longer had time to maintain the near-collapse of order around him.
The transport ships in the sky are being shot down one by one, and the New Columbia have just experienced the immense pain of going from a hopeful beginning to a rapid fall into the abyss.
"Graven, what exactly do these Protoss want to do?!"
Multiple Tal'darim shuttles quickly departed the Fleets and flew towards the ground. Then, large numbers of Tal'darim warriors dressed in black armor and red robes appeared in New Columbia City, heading straight for the mercenaries.
"The facts are obvious. They think they have the game in the bag, and now it's Game time," Hill cursed under his breath.
"Fire!"
Even without deliberately appearing before humanity, the Protoss Fleets can destroy everything in high orbit. The Tal'darim are undoubtedly seeking to unleash fear and hone their warriors through battle.
A battle is about to break out.
Even when running on the ground, these Tal'darim are as fast as human war machines. Each of them is equipped with a single plasma shield, allowing them to completely ignore Electromagnetic Rifle fire during a charge.
Human shield technology is currently only applicable to warships of the fortress and battlecruiser class, requiring massive energy supplies to power the shields, while lightweight and miniaturized individual soldier shields have yet to achieve a technological breakthrough.
The Tal'darim on Gohbus weren't just armed with blades; they also deployed numerous plasma cannons and Phase Disruptor that warped to the surface. The dazzling crimson orbs that struck the mercenaries melted away like shattered jelly, no matter how indestructible or reinforced their armor.
When the blades of the Tal'darim warriors followed closely, these elite mercenaries were sliced to pieces with almost no power to resist.
The Tal'darim of Slayn are undoubtedly more powerful and more adept at war and slaughter than the Taldarim who once appeared in Bhekar, rather than being driven mad by fanaticism under the influence of Terrazine.
The war in New Columbia was one-sided; Hill's mercenaries had little chance of fighting back. Blood quickly stained the streets, and even the sandstorm was filled with the stench of blood.
"Why aren't those damn Imperial troops here yet?" Hill ordered his men to lead the citizens of New Columbia to the air-raid shelters while he led the remaining men to fend off the Tal'darim's fierce offensive. His AGR Rifle even took half a minute to penetrate a Protoss's shield.
He couldn't help but feel powerless. When the Tal'darim wielded their crimson blades and leaped into the midst of the mercenaries, it was like an autumn wind sweeping away fallen leaves, and they could only use grenades and rockets to fight back against these Protoss.
This was a massacre, but the Tal'darim elevated it to an art.
"They should have come sooner!" Harris was so heartbroken as he watched his brothers, who had fought alongside him through thick and thin, being hacked to the ground in droves that he could barely speak.
This loss is enough for Harris to wail for weeks.
The limbs of dead mercenaries were scattered all around, and many New Columbia City lay in the corners of the streets, most of them unconscious from fright, while those who had collapsed to the ground trembled uncontrollably.
Just as the mercenaries' lines had been completely torn apart, blue and purple light, indicating the arrival of spatial fluctuations, suddenly appeared in the sky above Gohbus. One after another, Terran Empire battlecruisers leaped out, and more than forty ships appeared in less than a minute.
The Imperial Fleets and the Tal'darim Fleets above New Columbia faced off from a distance of several leagues. But to those on the ground, the Terran Empire flagship and the Tal'darim Mothership appeared extremely close.
The battlecruiser's classic hammerhead design was unmistakable; this was the first direct confrontation between the Terran Empire's steel Fleets and the Tal'darim Death Fleet.
The New Columbia on the ground were so shocked that they forgot to gasp in surprise; some, however, were in a daze, tears streaming down their faces. They had never imagined that the Terran Empire, which they had never even seen before, would mobilize such a massive Fleets for a sparsely populated colony.
The Terran Confederacy's Fleets may have been larger in the past, but they never dared to confront the Protoss or Zerg head-on.
The Tal'darim on the ground also halted their attack due to this turn of events, and the mercenaries immediately tightened their defenses and dragged back their wounded comrades.
"This is the Revolutionary Army Fleets flagship Steel Justice. I am Admiral Horace Warfield, Grand Admiral of the Terran Empire. Tal'darim Fleets, you have entered Imperial airspace. Cease attack and surrender immediately." A deep voice came from the still-functioning loudspeakers and radio stations in New Columbia City.
"I repeat, this is the Empire!"
"Alright, I know what you're braying about, General Warfield." Harris was furious, but he and Hill both noticed that a large number of fighter jets and transport planes were leaving the Imperial Fleets.
"I hope you know how to win a battle."
Hill had seen that new model of transport ship, the G-226, a new model developed by the Terran Empire. The G-226 had a larger carrying capacity than the old APOD-33 and was also equipped with an aerial nanomedical station, making it a transport medical ship that mercenaries drooled over.
"Alright, gather the rest of you," Hill ordered.
"We have reinforcements."
"In this world far removed from the core of civilization, the cruel side of the dark universe has already begun to emerge."
On the Steel Justice, Admiral Horace Field, his eyes glued to the Taldarim Fleets on the screen, said to the Protoss executive officer Artanis beside him, "The Tal'darim believe in a golden rule: they have guns, you don't."
"The Tal'darim, the Firstborn has never seen them since the Aeon of Strife. At that time, the brilliance of the Khala had not yet enlightened that ignorant and sorrowful age." Upon hearing the news that the Tal'darim had reappeared and was attacking the human world, Artanis was originally preparing to return to Shakuras to fight Orega, stayed behind.
"The Taldarim have returned; this is not a good sign."
"I am Artanis, the Daelaam Executive." At this moment, communication between the Steel Justice and the Taldarim Mothership was established, and a tall Tal'darim appeared before Artanis and Warfield.
"Tal'darim, immediately cease your brutality! You have broken the law of the Da'u."
Compared to the efforts the Daelaam have made to change their image, the Taldarim's actions are simply smearing the Protoss race. For example, the Gohbus people right now don't have time to figure out the difference between the Daelaam and the Tal'darim.
"Oh, Artanis! You'll be surprised to hear my name!" The Taldarim commander interrupted Artanis without any politeness, "I am Taldarim, the fourth Alarak to be promoted!"
"The Taldarim don't care about anything—Dau—oh—are you trying to drown me in your saliva, Templar Knights?"
"If you don't want to die, retreat obediently. Of course, I don't care whether you live or die."
"I don't want to wield my sword against my former brethren—" Artanis said, but still ignited his blue Psionics blade.
"Alright, I'll tell you what humans will do, Executive." Warfield said.
"Imperial Fleets, open fire immediately!"
I didn't finish writing it when I posted it; refreshing the page will add a few more paragraphs.