StarCraft: Tyranid Empire

Umoyan territory.

Phaethon, Akilon Wastes.

The setting sun on the Akilon Great Plains is about to completely sink, and the red glow is gradually converging. The horizon filled with large expanses of red flying sand and the countless canyons shrouded in charming purple-gray light are being transformed by a terrifying replaced by darkness.

It won't be long before the dark night sky will leap above the horizon, and Phaethon's kind moon will once again rule the sky and the earth.

Even at sunset, the Aquilon Moors are still sandy and unbearably hot, and the continuous sand dunes seem to never end.

Under the dim night, a convoy of more than a dozen Montana F200 trucks, Richard Bilt trailers and Mohican all-terrain vehicles were driving from the starry horizon, illuminated by the moonlight. Trailing a long shadow.

This fleet belongs to the Melville family of Akilon. This large and leafy family can be traced back to the Umoyan explorers a century ago. At that time, their ancestors were already struggling to survive in this barren desert filled with red sand. .

The Umoyan people have been looking for a new home with a pleasant climate in the universe, but their luck is not very good.

For a long time, the Melville family has lived a nomadic life, constantly pursuing the oases, crystal veins and high-energy gas springs of Akilon.

Like other residents of Phaethon, the Melville family can no longer remember how their ancestors discovered this desolate desert world two or three generations ago. Only one thing has never been changed or forgotten, and that is Phaethon's harsh natural laws, and humans are just fish in a sea of ​​sand.

As the night got darker, the Melville family's motorcade was still driving alone in the low night. During this period, they only replenished water and fuel at a few marked water sources and automatic gas refining stations before continuing on their way without stopping. They did not dare to stop and set up camp, as if a savage beast was chasing after them.

There are many poisonous insects and beasts living in the wilderness of Akilon, some of which even humans have to be careful to guard against, but they will never cause this family to panic. Not long ago, Phaethon was not as dangerous as it is now, but that was before the swarms arrived.

At the front of the Melville family's motorcade is a Montana F200 truck that has been modified several times. The truck is filled with the family's property. The entire vehicle has been through longer than the newborn in the family.

The huge headlights of the Montana F200 cast a bright light, guiding the team's direction. Paul, the patriarch of the Melville family, is sitting in the passenger seat of the Montana truck. He is a dark-skinned elder. His entire face is wrapped in a hood and tulle, only a pair of blue eyes are exposed. Watching the movement outside the window.

This wilderness is nothing but sand. There are almost no undulations on the ground. Even small rocks are rare. In the distance, only undulating gullies of sand dunes can be seen.

"The Griffith family has not contacted us for eighteen hours, and all calls have been in vain." The driver was Paul's nephew, a strong young man.

Akilon's strong wind was carrying sand and gravel and smashing against the sight glass window of the truck, making a crackling sound. A terrible sandstorm has taken shape in the south, and the dust has obscured the brightness of the stars.

The truck's on-board navigation system is still working, but the holographic three-dimensional map on it has not been updated for a long time. Only a few drones following the convoy are still transmitting back surrounding images in real time.

Phaethon also had cities, indeed those towns built among large oases were once beautiful and wealthy. There was also a busy starport there, and huge container ships plied the trade routes between Phaethon and other human worlds. The Melville family had been traveling between the city and the wilderness in the past.

Today, all that remains of those cities are black smoldering ruins, thick germ blankets, and horrific zerg overgrowth.

The Melville family is not a tribe of degenerated barbarians. They still possess quite advanced technology to a certain extent. The family’s children will also receive legacy education and read digital books stored on tapes. The Phaethons came from Umoyan and believed that knowledge brings wisdom.

Hundreds of automatic water pumping stations and automatic gas extraction facilities in Aquilon were once the property of this family, but most of them are now exhausted.

"Like all disappearing families, I think the god of death has found them." Paul turned his head sadly and looked at the vehicles following far behind: "If he harvests lives so fast, then he will also be dead soon." Will find us."

"But where do we go?" His nephew knew that question would not be answered. The zerg might not have arrived in Akilon Wasteland yet, but they might already be everywhere.

In this era, war is raging far faster than our predecessors imagined. The people of Phaethon knew little about the zerg, and their militia was not afraid of the pirates, but they collapsed in the blink of an eye in front of the zerg swarm.

"The city of Pegasus has also fallen. We have already visited the last city." Paul no longer had hope.

No one would respond to the cry for help from a planet mired in a sea of ​​worms, and Phaethon was far beyond the reach of the Umoyan fleet. The only hope left for Phaethon and the Melville family is the Terran Empire fleet, but everyone knows that even the powerful empire cannot protect itself now.

Many of the Tyranids' own planets were in deep war, so how could they control Phaethon. No more ships will sail to Phaethon, and no more ships will sail away.

This is a hopeless escape. The Zerg are extremely ferocious, show no mercy, and possess terrifying patience. They will eventually find them and tear them all to pieces.

Paul still remembered that the day when the zerg arrived was no different from any other day. The children were still repairing the damaged automatic extraction facilities, guarding against ill-intentioned families stealing resources from their property.

Suddenly, everything changed, starting with the arrival of the swarm.

The best-case scenario is that they keep running forever, so that the zerg can never catch up, but that's impossible.

"Ahead is the M169 gas extraction station." The nephew looked at the fuel meter again. The number above was not optimistic. It is very dangerous for a vehicle to break down in the desert, so their route cannot be too far from the gas extraction facility on the map.

Generally, there will be several gas tank trucks filled with fuel in the fleet, but they must be prepared for emergencies, such as now. Additionally, their food reserves were low, so they had to stay close to towns that might have been overrun by the zerg.

Typically, if these extraction facilities were not owned by the Melville family, they would pay a fee when requesting oil from other families who guarded the facility. But now it seems that M169 may have been abandoned long ago, because the family that built it has not responded for a long time.

"Don't slow down." Paul used the communication device to tell the following vehicles: "If there is any situation, just rush over."

At this time, the outline of the gas extraction station became clearer and clearer, and Paul became more and more uneasy. In a daze, he seemed to see many scarlet eyes in the darkness around him.

"Grandpa!" Suddenly, a little head with red hair poked out of the window between the truck bed and the cab.

".What!" Paul was startled and looked at his grandson.

The child had some kind of psychic talent, and Umoyan's shadow guards visited him many times to take him away, but his mother refused.

The Melville family is not superstitious. They believe that this innate talent has nothing to do with luck or misfortune. They neither regard it as a god nor a devil.

Unbeknownst to them, telepaths have an unusual attraction to the zerg.

"It's zerg, I can hear the sound of them burrowing underground." The red-haired boy said.

His hearing was not much sharper than that of ordinary people. Rather than hearing the sound of the zerg digging underground, it was more like feeling the spiritual connection between the zerg.

"You just had a nightmare." Paul's first reaction was that his grandson had made a mistake. In his opinion, telepaths did not have any extraordinary abilities other than being able to read other people's voices.

"Maybe?" The child himself was not sure.

"But he didn't sleep at all, Dad." Paul's daughter's nervous face appeared aside.

"The Milky Way!" When Paul turned his head suddenly, he was sure that he saw two springtails blocking the car, and more scarlet eyes appeared around the building of the gas extraction station.

Springtails are just a large dog in size, more like wolves in habits and attack methods, but their body is as nimble as a small desert gerbil in Akilon.

Even though the truck was driving towards them, the two springtails showed no fear. Instead, they flexed their well-developed quadriceps muscles to vibrate the long pairs of wings on their backs, making a threatening rustling sound. It was a variant of Springtail, a highly aggressive specialized variant that first appeared in the genetic sequence of the Gamu swarm.

Different large insect swarms have their own strains. For example, the purple-carapace Jörmungandr swarm hatchery will hatch large-scale zerg variants named fission worms by imperial alien physiologists.

"Don't stop, just rush over!" Paul shouted.

It is possible to crush a springtail with the load and speed of a Montana truck, but the speed and reaction of these little bastards are so fast that hitting them is not an easy task, but just scare these monsters away. .

But before the truck hit it, with a clang, the two springtails jumped onto the car window with incredible jumping ability. One of the springtails used the sickle-shaped appendage on its back to directly cut open the car window glass and pierced Paul's nephew's chest. Blood immediately splashed all over the cab, as easily as a sharp knife cut through a piece of paper. .

"Oh! No no no!"

With the clang of the car roof and the sound of sharp blades cutting steel, more springtails jumped up. The truck quickly lost control and crashed into the steel wall of the nearby gas extraction station with a scream of engine. The driver's seat was immediately filled with an inflated air bag.

After what seemed like a long time, Paul suddenly woke up from the pain. He felt that the whole world was burning, and the surroundings were filled with terrifying roars and the screams of automatic weapons.

Paul found himself lying next to his daughter. The men of the Melville family were holding weapons and leaning on the vehicle in a circle. The air was filled with the smell of blood and burning protein.

His daughter also looked dead.

The desert of Phaethon tempered people's will and made them not afraid of ferocious beasts. The Melville men in white robes have many weapons in their hands, including some electromagnetic rifles that are widely circulated in the weapons market.

Even so, this was a massacre without any suspense.

The old man struggled to stand up, only to find that he had cut the back of his head. The terrible wound didn't hurt much, but it was still bleeding.

He saw in despair that the two twin brothers fighting side by side were dragged out by the springtails that besieged them, and were torn into several pieces amidst the ear-piercing screams. Springtails are one of the most numerous and smallest species among the Zerg tribe, but even so they can easily tear apart an army, let alone ordinary people who are simply armed.

More springtails joined the battlefield, including the huge Hydra Hydralisk. These monsters the size of small trucks brought a bloody storm as soon as they appeared. A sixteen-year-old Melville boy armed with an AGR rifle was pushed dozens of yards away by a series of deadly spines and impaled on the wall behind.

Not far away from him lay his father and brothers. Rivers of blood flowed, and bloody stumps were everywhere.

There was a younger child who was so frightened that he lost his mind and even wanted to kneel down to the zerg for mercy, and he was quickly overwhelmed by the swarm of zerg, like a fragile rag.

The ferocious zerg bloodthirstly fought for human bodies. Some were bitten to death while others were quartered by five horses.

Paul saw his grandson still standing not far away. He wanted to shout loudly but could not say anything.

The child seems to be looking up to the sky. What is he looking at?

His cry was answered by a bright flash, like lightning before thunder. Even the roaring zerg raised its head and retreated involuntarily.

Like the giant eagle in the desert of Akilon, the incarnation of Phaethon, the sky god. Multiple Viking fighter planes jumped across the sky in the night, their steel-like wings carrying the dusty wind under the stars.

The golden flames held up the giant eagle in the sky, as if they were its sharp feathers.

There are thousands of golden eagles in the sky.

A huge Viking rushed to the ground. The speed and angle of the dive were fatal to any human fighter. Only the Raptor could do it. It landed on the ground and set off a violent shock wave and flames. A hail of bullets spread out, beating the swarms of springtails into a pulp.

"The Archangel is here, all imperial troops, move forward!"

Phaethon is the planet where the insect mother Naktur is located in the third level of Heart of the Swarm.