StarCraft: Tyranid Empire

There is no dawn in Sagurath.

Outside the main defense line of the temple is a horrific scene, with countless huge corpses and mecha wreckage exposed to the cold wind of Sagulath's midnight and the heart-wrenching twilight.

This is undoubtedly an epic defensive battle.

In the twilight-shrouded days and nights of Sagulas, huge armies of insect swarms came one after another, overwhelming and overwhelming the human bunkers and the Protoss fort buildings, as if the glory of the dominant era was here. Reappear.

Until this time, the never-ending erosion of the Shadow of the Void had made Saguras extremely ill. Following Taimatros, the Kakaru Keys, the Temple of Lizul, the Isle of Razjan and Major protoss settlements such as New Antioch also fell one after another, and the Xel'Naga Temple was the last area still in the hands of the Tyranid Empire and its allies.

Since the beginning of the war, Nerazim protoss phasers and imperial engineers have been continuously strengthening the defenses of the Xel'Naga Temple. The solid planetary fortresses, steel-plated bunkers and doomsday turrets are welded by the fire of the T-280 space engineering vehicle. Rising from the ground, glittering golden photon turrets, ion beam cannons and shield chargers jumped from the Spear of Adun to the surface at an astonishing speed.

Almost every few minutes, the transformation of the Xel'Naga Temple from a sacred sanctuary to a super fortress takes a step further. The criss-crossing fortifications look like a jungle that is growing wildly under a time-lapse lens. Every fifty yards there is a piercing siege tank set up, every two hundred yards there is a bunker covered with electroplated stainless steel plates, and countless black artillery muzzles extend diagonally into the air, like hedgehogs. There are spikes all over the body.

Even if they are wearing power armor and holding a Gauss rifle, the Marines will not want to meet the insect swarm head-on on an unobstructed battlefield. If there happens to be a bunker nearby, they can destroy enemies ten times their size.

All the Marines were prepared for an unexpected encounter to turn into hand-to-hand combat, but everyone knew there was no chance of winning.

The outer perimeter of the temple's defenses is a large number of concrete bunkers, obstacles, and shockingly dense minefields. The area dozens of miles deep is covered with countless spider booby traps, widow mines, and Magnet mines. Making any attempt to get close to the temple a wild adventure.

Now, this magnificent temple building has been completely transformed into a rock fortress rooted in the highlands of Sagulath. It has to be said that this is another Tyranid speed. Under the leadership of Chief Engineer Rory Swann , the Imperial Engineering Corps, which the Emperor was proud of, once again accomplished its mission brilliantly.

In this way, on the first night when Augustus arrived at the Xel'Naga Temple, the insect swarms gathered outside the temple began to attack the insect nests in batches after the first few tentative attacks. Attack the temple. Judging from the attack deployment, it is obvious that this is not a swarming, chaotic attack, but an attempt to find weaknesses in the defenses.

Zerg individuals lack obvious intelligence and are efficient and ruthless killing machines, but swarms are not beasts that hunt based on instinct alone. On the contrary, their tactics are very clever, but more often than not, sheer numbers can overwhelm them. everything.

On this night, Augustus only slept briefly for about two or three hours, but it was enough for him.

At night, huge noises and terrifying shock waves swept across the battlefield from the Imperial defense positions. It was as if a hundred Gorgon-class battlecruisers were firing at the same time. Large tracts of mud and gravel were thrown into the air, and 100% fell from every square mile. The number of shells even rivaled the zerg density in the area.

By the next morning, the ground was already covered with huge craters, the huge rocks were blown to pieces, and even the mounds dotted on the desert were completely flattened. Under such dense covering firepower, all things being equal, even those rough-skinned, thick-fleshed and heavily armored thunder beasts would not be spared.

The hundred-mile radius of the Xel'Naga Temple has become a meat grinder of steel, fire and flesh. The overwhelming artillery fire tore all enemies who tried to get close to the temple into pieces. Explosive dust and destructive smoke columns hung in the sky, and the vast land was piled with broken insect corpses and giant skeletons in layers, like piles of flying insect corpses that died under a lampshade.

Everything in front of me was really sensational. The swarm of insects seemed to have used their flesh and blood to carve out a path in the minefield deployed outside the temple as a matter of course. It was really a road paved by mountains of corpses and seas of blood, as if they were painted with red paint on Sagu. Conspicuous marks were painted on the purple-glowing ground of Lars.

After the strong air wave caused by the explosion of the shell, the bloody carapace of the Zerg fell like rain. It was really a bloody storm.

On the positions of the Dark Templar, Purifiers, Templars and Tal'darin Protoss, the situation may be different. A variety of dazzling particle weapons can be seen above their positions, and the enemies are either directly reduced to ashes. Either it is like being accurately cut into several pieces by a few silk threads or it is directly broken into a molecular state.

This can be called the last battle of Sarcoras. The Dark Templar led by Vorazun did not hesitate to use their mysterious omen abilities and terrifying space-time weapons to reduce the pressure on their allies and buy time as much as possible.

The Dark Templar's ability to drag enemies into gravity wells and disrupt time and space, or even stop time, made Alarak's Tal'darin protoss jaw-dropped, sour and hungry.

Regardless, at the end of the day, Augustus was pleased that they had been able to fend off the swarm at relatively minimal cost. The swarm paid an unimaginable price, and the dead zerg were enough to fill the deep trench in front of the Xel'Naga Temple, but we must not be blindly optimistic because of this.

Augustus believed that this was just the first wave of the swarm's offensive, and that subsequent attacks would be even more frenzied, which was immediately confirmed.

It is roughly estimated that the zerg that died outside the temple the day before accounted for only a very small portion of the number that landed on Sagulas. For the protoss, this level of sacrifice is an absolute heavy blow, but for the insects, it just scratches an itch.

The Lord of the Swarm will never grieve for the sacrifice of an individual, and Amon will not care about the life or death of the instrument of destruction.

The second wave of offensive is coming soon. This time, these insect swarms are led by a large number of hybrids. Hundreds of Void Rippers emerge from the rift between the void and reality. Dense psychic signals indicate that A more horrific and bloody killing is about to come.

Hybrids are loyal servants of Aemon. They possess extremely high intelligence, can control large-scale insect swarms, and are also extremely powerful individually. At the same time, the Void's erosion of Sagurath further increased the power of these hybrids, making only the most powerful protoss warriors able to compete with them.

For the soldiers in the fortifications, this was a cruel test.

Augustus was not worried about whether his army could hold its line under the terrifying offensive of the swarm. They were no longer afraid of humans, zerg, or protoss.

Nowadays, young people of working age are no longer as resistant to joining the army as they were in the past. Whenever a full-scale war swept the entire Koprulu sector, the Tyranid Empire needed more troops, and this has subconsciously become a tradition.

Many Imperial worlds have militias that are close to a standing army, capable of forming millions of stormtroopers when necessary, because the threat of the swarm forces them to form an armed force to defend their homeland. One would say that the first thing a child born in a swarm-ravaged world learned to do in life before he could speak was to shoot at zerg.

Despite facing hundreds of millions of swarms, the Imperial warriors guarding the Xel'Naga Temple never thought they had been abandoned, but maintained high morale.

As the founder of an interstellar empire, Augustus naturally fought alongside his warriors. The demoralized Imperial warriors would immediately be greatly encouraged by bringing up old events, even if Augustus only showed up at the front.

If anyone talks to Admiral Jim Raynor, some say that as long as Emperor Augustus is around, the Terran Empire has never lost.

The admiral said, well, yes, just leave him there, it will work better than anything else.

The torrent of insects is like waves surging on the beach, one wave after another, each wave is stronger than the last, making your center of gravity unstable, and eventually you are swept into the suffocating giant waves.

For the rest of the day, the artillery fire never stopped. In the flickering light of tracer bullets and flares, the impact points of the artillery shells continuously emitted violent flashes and deafening explosions. The huge sound waves were enough to throw smaller bugs into the sky.

When a firebase is attacked by a swarm of insects, they will immediately incur a more violent counterattack. Those who parachuted to the surface of Sagulath were all elite Imperial main divisions, some of which could trace their history back to the Korhal Uprising. Some veterans had even heard of the Declaration of Independence issued by Angus Mengsk.

The Xel'Naga Temple soon turned into a slaughterhouse full of ruins, wreckage, corpses and nightmares. Fierce fighting continued day and night, with hundreds of battles surrounding every courtyard, every corridor and every building. The altar was unfolded so that the exquisite carvings and hieroglyphs singing the epic poem were wet and soaked with blood.

It is nothing new for the Tyranid Empire and the protoss to work side by side to resist the swarm, but it is a fantasy for the Tal'darin to work together with the templars and dark templars to resist the swarm. Purifiers and high-ranking templars faced dozens or hundreds of zerglings back to back, giving their backs to each other's protection without reservation. When a Tal'darin protoss fought to defend the temple, even The Dark Templar would also find it awkward.

Artanis never imagined that the unification of the protoss that Tassadar and the protoss he had always wanted to achieve would actually become a reality in this way. Without Amon, even in another ten thousand years, the various branches of the protoss would have been separated from each other, and there would even be constant friction and conflicts.

The protoss said that humans are a race that loves to kill each other, but they are not much better.

After holding on until the second night, the casualties were already difficult to control, but more troops and heavy firepower were sent to the temple. An army reporter with special permission to enter the frontline troops tried to describe the scene of this battle in words, but all descriptive techniques and words pale in face of the bloody reality. The Imperials' reluctance to glorify war and sacrifice is a solid news story.

People will know what they or other brothers, sisters and children did to defend the Empire, but they will never know the pain they endured.

Fortunately, the defenders maintained air superiority, and Artanis dispatched almost all of the Phoenix fighters in the Spear of Adun, except for the reconnaissance aircraft he piloted in Brood War.

With air superiority, the Tyranid Empire's Twilight Wings Banshee bomber troops rushed towards ground targets in groups, washing the battlefield with their banshee-like screams. Bombers carrying napalm bombs focused on striking conspicuous ground targets and clearing out giant ground units that posed a great threat to the defenses.

Despite paying a great price, the position of the Xel'Naga Temple was lost bit by bit, leaving only a pile of rubble blackened by flames.

At the same time, the number of insect swarms on Sagulas also reached a very terrifying number, and the number of hybrids exceeded five digits for the first time.

When Augustus and Artanis learned that the phase prism of the Xel'Naga Temple could be overloaded at any time, they both determined that the time had come.

The wounded were the first to leave on the evacuation ship, then some soldiers were ordered to stay and others left. The remaining defenders used continuous orbital bombardment as a cover and gradually abandoned most of the Xel'Naga Temple positions. The last elite retreated into the depths of the Xel'Naga Temple through the intricate passages, waiting for the prism to be overloaded. Cause a shock wave to destroy the planet.

"How glad I am to fight alongside you once again, Augustus Mengsk."

Walking in the carved Xel'Naga Temple, Artanis couldn't help but said to Augustus: "We will march towards the battlefield of glory together!"

Surrounding them are numerous Imperial Royal Guards, Matriarch Shadow Guards, Spears of Adun, Golden Age Templars, and Tal'darim High Ascendants.

You are still so passionate. Augustus thought with relief: "Just like in the past."

Augustus originally thought that Artanis would hold on alone until the last moment when the phase prism completed its overload.

But Artanis didn't, he seemed to want to be with him.

As if something suddenly occurred to him, Artanis looked at Alarak again and said:

"Same for you, Alarak."

"I feel neither glory nor pleasure," Alarak replied promptly.

"We have the same blood and are all protoss." Artanis's shining blue eyes became even brighter: "In the face of this catastrophe, the protoss should abandon the prejudices and barriers of the past, unite as one, and unite as one to defeat the enemy. Eamonn.”

"Well said, Artanis." Alarak said, "I thought your stupidity was just a disguise, but I didn't expect you to really think so."

"If you can kill your enemy, do it, A-Ta-nis."