Two Years After the Final Battle
Terran Empire territory, Chau Sara.
Many years had passed since the Protoss fleet destroyed Chau Sara. The entire planet's surface had been vitrified, its cities reduced to ash, its mountains flattened. All that remained of its rivers, mountains, lakes, and seas were terrifying molten scars, and every form of life had been wiped out.
A lush, vibrant, beautiful world had become a wasteland overnight, never recovering.
Life was tenacious. In the years that followed, some vegetation had grown back on Chau Sara, but it was sparse and sickly, nowhere near as lush as before—like a young man who had once had a thick head of hair going bald before his time.
Chau Sara had once been green, but afterward, she became just another unremarkable barren planet among the countless worlds in Imperial space, no more than a dim yellow eye on a navigation chart.
But that was all before the "Overnight Miracle."
"..."
"It sure feels good coming back here as a great hero who saved the whole universe. Right, Jimmy?"
Tychus Findlay's getup was no different from that of any common country bumpkin on the Empire's frontier worlds: hard-wearing trousers, a weathered jacket, an old-fashioned revolver that could kill a man, and a Vulture that had changed hands more times than anyone could count.
Even if he had truly been granted noble rank and high office, Tychus would never have been willing to dress in suits all day. Besides, he was only coasting in some idle post at Imperial Marine Corps headquarters. Even when he finally remembered to clock in for work, he still showed up looking like an unkempt mess.
Augustus usually called it a pig not knowing good grain when he saw one, saying Tychus looked like a savage.
But today