Our Shoulders Side-by-Side, Our Swords Edge-to-Edge

There was no dawn on Shakuras.

Beyond the temple's main defensive line lay a horrific sight: countless massive corpses and mech wrecks lay exposed to Shakuras's midnight chill and the twilight gloom that tightened the heart.

This was unquestionably an epic defensive battle.

Through Shakuras's eternally twilight days and nights, vast Zerg armies arrived one after another, blotting out the sky as they crashed against human bunkers and Protoss turret complexes, as if the glory of the Overmind era had returned.

By now, the unceasing corrosion of the Void's shadows had left Shakuras terminally ill. Following Tamateros, major Protoss settlements such as the Kakaru Keys, Rizul Temple, Isle of Razjan, and New Antioch had also fallen one after another. The Xel'Naga Temple was the last region still held by the Terran Empire and its allies.

Since the war began, Nerazim phase technicians and Imperial engineers had continually reinforced the Xel'Naga Temple's defenses. Sturdy planetary fortresses, steel-plated bunkers, and Doom Turrets rose amid the welding sparks of T-280 SCVs, while glittering Photon Cannons, Ion Cannons, and Shield Batteries warped down from the Spear of Adun to the surface at astonishing speed.

Almost every few minutes, the Xel'Naga Temple advanced further in its transformation from a sacred sanctuary into a super fortress. Its interlocking fortifications looked like a jungle growing wildly in time-lapse footage. A deployed Crucio Siege Tank stood every fifty yards, a bunker clad in electroplated refined-steel armor every two hundred, and countless black artillery barrels jutted diagonally into the sky like the bristling spines of a hedgehog.

Even clad in Power Armor and gripping Gauss Rifles, Marines would never want to meet the Zerg head-on in open ground. But if there happened to be a bunker nearby, they could kill enemies ten times their number.

Every Marine was prepared