StarCraft: Tyranid Empire.

Uncle Augustus, I have received your reply.

This happened a long time ago, and I have recovered from my illness long ago, with no major damage except a few pounds.

Now I am fine.

Ironically, after the battle of Innisfree was over, I was promoted again and officially took over the 101st Marine Battalion, even though the promotion committee that approved the appointment process knew the details of the battle even before I did. My new adjutant was a Kemorian named Ulrik, a former diplomat of the Combine. Since we effectively ruled Moria, he had been "unemployed" and could only try his luck in Tarsonis.

The promotion came quickly, much faster than I expected. As far as I know, among my classmates at Stilling Academy, only Eastl Foss had a higher rank than me.

Eastel was my best friend in college, and I was very happy for him, but also a little jealous of him.

Because Ister joined the battle earlier than me and caught up with the Second Battle of Aiur, while I could only run between several sectors far away from the front line, dealing with small branch nests of the Broken Zerg, second-rate space pirates and drunken mercenaries.

Sometimes we have to act as police officers to mediate armed conflicts, gang fights and even family conflicts among residents. If we happen to be in an agricultural settlement and the situation is tense, we have to help farmers harvest grain and protect the planting areas.
This is not the war I imagined. War is hell and the battlefield is a meat grinder.

I'm definitely not as brave as I think I am, and I'm not afraid of death, but I'm more afraid of being a Mengsk and doing nothing.

But I soon learned that even the most menial of tasks had value.

After leaving Innisfree, my troops went to Catallena, a planet with vast land and vast ocean. The most famous species there is a huge sea monster.

When the Golden Fleet, corrupted by Amon, attacked, the residents of Catalina were forced to evacuate, and the situation was so critical that they could not even take their most precious belongings with them. The Golden Fleet appeared suddenly, and due to the gap in space technology - but more importantly, due to serious negligence, our irresponsible observers were surprisingly slow and did not notice any abnormal movements.

In fact, if the Golden Fleet had not suddenly withdrawn just before burning Catalina to ashes, just like it had come, without causing any damage, the observer would have never expected to get out of prison in his lifetime.

We all speculated that it was because our fleet attacked Aiur at that time, because the Protoss had never done anything like this before - the Protoss must have identified something and would not stop.

This just confirms what General Stukov said: I never knew that the Protoss only burned half of something.

In any case, by the time we reached Catalina, there was no sign of the Protoss, and the biggest threats were wild beasts that were no bigger than a house cat.

As expected, this was another simple mission: fire reconnaissance and clearing out enemies that didn't exist at all.

The credit comes easily.

However, considering that my people had nothing to do and they would definitely break something when they had nothing to do, I ordered that the remaining time be used to repair houses for residents who were about to return home, rebuild roads and canals, and ensure that power stations and signal relay stations could be restarted when needed.

There are many skilled craftsmen in my Marines. They were workers, farmers and mechanics before joining the army, but you can hardly expect Protoss Templar to do the work of the Khalai hierarchy.

Of course, like any other army, there are some former hooligans, speeders, and even hopeless drug addicts in my unit, and a few have been to prison. Since the war with Amon began, we have been suffering casualties every day, so we have to lower our standards.

I didn't know enough about these people to doubt whether I should be on guard against them stealing any property left behind by the residents of Catalina in their haste. Even a hero like Tychus Findlay had a history of stealing munitions in his early years.

Below is a note from Augustus: "Because Tychus needs to steal some 'insignificant trinkets to exchange for a few cents' to pay off his gambling debts and the money he spends on those pink beauties. Even if Tychus is given a mountain of gold, he can become a pauper overnight.

In fact, the reason a man like Tychus didn’t get shot to death was entirely because of me. His parents gave him his first life, and I gave him the second, which proves that I am his father. "

Arcturus agreed with this. There was no way a man like him would trust a vicious dog like Tychus. If he had to let Tychus out to bite someone, Arcturus would definitely equip his power armor with a bomb and tell him that Mr. Finley's detonator was in his hand, so he had to obey if he didn't want to die.

Valerian continued: But it is obvious that I must not openly express my distrust of them, otherwise I will lose the morale of the army.

If it was my father who was leading the army, then it would be very simple. First of all, if my father thought he needed Katarina's support, then he would whip the stealing soldier in public, and if he thought he didn't need it, then he wouldn't care.

But if it were you, Uncle Augustus, what would you do?
Anyway, in the end I told everyone that if they wanted the people of Catalina to welcome us in the future as they had in the past, they had to love their mother as their own and treat their home as their own.

I may have made two mistakes. First, I cannot assume that everyone has the minimum ability to empathize. Second, I cannot assume that everyone has a mother.

But I think my subsequent orders were the most effective. I gave specific orders, such as forbidding soldiers to enter any house, even if their doors were wide open. I ordered them to clean the roads and mow the lawns before evacuating the settlement. If any water tower was empty, I hoped that it would be filled when we left. In short, everything should be better than when we came.

I don't think I'll forget how shocked and moved I was when several Catalina residents decided to risk returning to their hometown to salvage their property.

Most of Catalina's settlers came from Trinidad, a cold, barren ash world in the Lucullus system whose entire population lived in domed cities. It had once served as a prison colony until its prisoners overthrew their guards, and Trinidad became one of the most chaotic and violent worlds in the Koprulu Sector.

Criminals and pirates rule New Trinidad, a lawless place.

The Empire had only begun to truly rule New Trinidad in recent years, and there it was almost unimaginable that there would be an army in the world that refused to plunder and massacre.

I mean, if it were other worlds that had already joined the Empire, they wouldn't be too shocked by this. Because we are not the only Imperial army that has done this, and the Korhal Revolutionary Army you led was the first to do so.

General Raynor told me that half of the Imperial Army today has bloodlines from the Revolutionary Army and the Sons of Korhal. Even the Imperial Army with the worst military discipline is a hundred times stronger than the best army of the Old Federation.

Later I heard that the flag of my battalion was still kept in the colonial office in Catalina, where the people had torn up the imperial flags, burned them, and insulted them, but now they tattooed them on their bodies just because the imperial army had not harmed them at all.

I began to really understand why you always emphasize the difference between the Imperial Army and the old Federation Army, emphasizing discipline, faith and will. Our army comes from the people, so we can't be too far away from the people.

General Matt Horner once said to me: The people are the most important thing. Don't worry about me, I'm fine.

12 month 5 day.

Uncle Augustus, I haven't written to you for a while because there is really nothing new.

I am now in Frost, and have been here for nearly a month with nothing to do, and I despairingly believe that I will rot on this boring planet until the war is over.

But there is one good thing, that is, this planet is not as cold as I thought before I came here, at least not in most areas. This is a vast and magical land, with dense canyons and mountain streams, and under the frosty highlands is a magma lake surging like molten gold. As the latitude decreases, the snow-covered forests turn green layer by layer, and those huge mineral veins occupy large areas of high mountain valleys like curved blue ribbons, flashing dark blue light.

There are more than hundreds of planets in the empire, and you may not even notice such small places when you are so busy with your daily life.

When we really set foot on this virgin land, the Protoss and the Zerg had already fought a great battle here. This was a battle that was enough to be recorded in history, a textbook Jedi counterattack.

I think this battle deserves some mention, as it was on this planet far away from their warm home world that the forces of Protoss Commander Alicia were cornered by a Zerg horde that far outnumbered them.

In comparison, Alicia only has a crumbling mothership core and a battered but still loyal Stalker Legion. When the overwhelming army of Mutalisks, Cockroaches and Zerglings is ready to surround and annihilate this Protoss army that has decided to fight to the death, the last belated mechanical sentinels and Immortal troops are the only support she can get.

I believe that at that time, the cold and ruthless swarm master of the enemy must have believed that he had already won the war. Even if he reviewed the situation a thousand times afterwards, he would not think that there was a possibility of losing the war.

But the impossible had happened, and every tactical officer I knew who had refused to allow the possibility of a miracle to be considered a factor in the decision of victory or defeat in the war now assumed that it was an obvious, unrepeatable miracle.

At the last moment, the Protoss commander mobilized all the power at his disposal. In hindsight, it can be said that the ultimate use of technological advantages and terrain was the key to her victory.

The Protoss fought beautifully, and their victory was not complicated. They used the space-time force field and the energy force field to divide the entire battlefield, making the ground and air forces of the Zerg completely disconnected. Then, a large number of Zerg were slaughtered by the Protoss' long-range phase weapons like lambs to be slaughtered.

However, time has passed, and the past is like smoke. Now the Zerg and Protoss have left the Frost Lands, but we are the ones who have finally gained a foothold here.

I came to the Frostlands because a Xel'Naga portal had just been discovered in the star region where I was, which greatly shortened the distance between the star system and the core world, so this remote planet suddenly became important.

The shortened transportation routes made the mining industry profitable. The Riksville Mining Company invested in 18 refineries, steel mills, and chemical plants in the Frost Land. The Ares Company opened arms factories here without stopping. Even giants like Bennett Industries decided to build turbine manufacturing plants to provide high-quality parts for their starships.

Once the Imperial Admiralty realized the value of the Frostlands, a massive starport was built to fill the gap in our military capabilities in that star region.

Once the Empire began to station troops on a planet, the number of ships on the new route increased several times, and three-quarters of the ships from more than twenty worlds began to flock to the Frost Lands, passing through the portals here to the Core Worlds in order to feed the industrial behemoth of the Empire.

Crystal ore and high-energy gas are the iron and blood of the new industrial age. When the war machine of the Terran Empire really starts to operate, the amount of minerals it consumes every day is the amount of the old Federation in half a year.

In the frost land, the factory was built almost overnight, looking so incongruous, rigid and cold.

The new machines in the factory are the latest technology, most of which we have learned from the Kel-Morians, the Protoss, and the Xel'Naga. We can now raze a mine faster than the Kel-Morians, and with more destructive power.

This is the imperial speed that the UNN promotes, this is plunder.

I have only been on this planet for a month, and the industrial zone near the base has expanded three times. With the arrival of these workers, corresponding industries, including food, retail and other companies have also taken root. However, these are mostly subsidiary industries of the empire's huge industrial complexes.

In this way, the Frost Land became the territory of the Empire.

But I have to say that the workers here don't have a good life. Most of them have to drive engineering vehicles all day to work in the underground mines that run through the entire mountain range. Even here, some people can't even get a car. They live apart from their families, earn 80 imperial credits a day, and have no vacation except for fixed rotations.

This income was considered quite good in the empire, but it was obviously not proportional to the work they put in.

The bottom workers are basically not natives, because the mining companies neither want to pay a penny for the insurance of these illegal immigrants, nor want to pay compensation for breach of contract and dismissal of imperial citizens. If possible, those stingy, money-conscious "goblins" will hire infected people to work for them.

12 month 27 day.

The news of the victory of the Aiur Campaign came. We defeated Amon's evil host and saved the corrupted Protoss. The whole empire was jubilant.

I was happy and sad at the same time. I felt that I had had enough of this. I lied to you before, and I still couldn't accept that when my teachers and classmates were fighting for the empire, I could only hide behind them.

But there is also a good thing, I finally received a notice to go out to protect an archaeologist named Jack Ramsey (the protagonist of the official novel Dark Templar Trilogy). He and his team were hired by the Imperial government and were preparing to go through the Frost Land to a former Nerazim Protoss world called Lerilak Crest to excavate Xel'Naga artifacts.

I had a great conversation with Jack. You all know that I have been interested in alien mysteries since I was a child. My mother said I had the potential to become an archaeologist.

No one could have imagined that archaeology, which had been ignored in the past, would suddenly become a promising and popular subject, linked to the research and development of cutting-edge technology.

In a later letter to my grandfather, I told him about my views on archaeology. Finally, I hoped that he would "inadvertently" mention this to my father, saying that I was really tired of staying in the rear with nothing to do, and if I could not go to the front-line troops, I would rather retire and give up inheriting the family business to become an archaeologist.

Ah ha, then my father might not mind sending me to the frontline to gain experience rather than losing his only heir. He'd put me under the wing of some of the empire's greatest generals, but it would be better than peeling potatoes in the backyard every day.

As long as it's not General Duke.

At this moment, Arcturus' face turned green: "Young people always think that if they want to create their own foundation, the first thing they have to do is to fight against their father!" (End of this chapter)