A squad of four hundred Tal’darim warriors assembled outside the northern entrance leading to the plateau. They mainly consisted off zealots and slayers. There were two havocs among them.

A low level ascendant was leading the assault.

This was just the first round. As arrogant as Nyon was, he was an experienced commander. He had four thousand warriors and the terran had four hundred, but the fact that the terran deployed a group of ground forces to the surface of the planet was suspicious.

Are they still going after the piece of artifact? Even when their only way out is being chased after and about to be shot down?

Nonetheless, he was cautious. As much as he looked down on the terran, he couldn’t help but admit they were innovative.

The first group of warriors was sent to test the Raiders out. If the Raiders had something up their sleeves, these warriors should be enough to force those tricks out. If they didn’t, well, he would send reinforcements and kill every last of them in the name of Amon.

Those warriors were treated as tools, and even they themselves knew it, but none of them cared. Living in a society as cruel as that of the Tal’darim meant being used. In fact, being used was a good thing. It meant they still had value. To these warriors, this battle was not a danger to their lives but was rather an opportunity to rise in the chain of ascension.

The ascendant knew that as well as he drew his crimson blade and pointed at the Raider formation. “Charge! For Amon!”

Four hundred Tal’darim followed. Zealots ignited their blades and fought for a chance to be the one in front. The more in front they were, the faster they could get into battle, and the more glory they could gain. Slayers, with their metal limbs, were slower, but occasionally some of them would cheat and blink forward a few steps into the front.

By choosing to be forged into a slayer armor, the slayers have given up an opportunity to be a part of the chain of ascension. However, that didn’t mean they no longer had any desire for glory.

The terran formation was already in place. Two lines of bunkers completely blocked off the entrance. Two siege tanks were in the back. Their turrets were ready to pump out countless rounds on top of any enemy that dared come in firing range.

In one of the bunkers, a certain female marine licked her lips as the wall of red came closer and closer.

It had been a while since the battle of Meinhoff, and after the bloody battle the female marine found herself much calmer in the face of danger. To a degree, she was already in the middle of being transformed from an armed civilian to a professional soldier.

Now that hundreds of Tal’darim were charging toward her, the marine, oddly, found herself unfazed. In fact, she even cracked a smile.

“What’s so funny?” A mercenary marine beside her asked, seeing the woman’s grin under her open helmet.

“Nothing. It’s just that I suddenly realized the protoss are so ugly.”

All three other marines in the bunker broke into laughters. The tense mood was suddenly gone.

“Cut the chatters.” A Raider captain ordered. “All units, you are ordered to hold your fire.”

The marines exchanged a confused look but nonethelessly complied.

The Tal’darim went over half the charging distance without being hit by a single bullet. The common zealots were already thrilled with the idea of slaughtering defenseless targets, but the leading ascendant wasn’t one of the brutes. He realized something was wrong. The warrior silently focused more void energy to his plasma shield.

One second the terran line was silent. The next second the sound of gauss rifles firing echoed through the field.

It was the Warden marines. Jean ordered most of the Raiders to hold their fire because they only had limited ammunition. She needed to use them as efficiently as possible. One shot one kill was impossible, but the least she could do was make sure every shot reached its target. Who was better at doing that than AI powered Warden units?

Perhaps she would order all units to open fire when the Tal’darim got too close and she needed as much firepower as possible, but not now.

The ascendant groaned as dozens of gauss bullets hit his plasma shield. He wasn’t as strong as Nyon psionically and his plasma shield generator, though stronger than that of the zealots, was still at a personal level. The bullets were deflected, but his shield shook violently as well.

If these bullets could do that to his shield, then what could they do to his warriors?

The ascendant didn’t bother looking back. Instead, he merely scanned behind him psionically.

What he realized was something he didn’t enjoy.

All 73 rifles hit their target, and as the Warden marines kept on firing, they unloaded hundreds of bullets in a few seconds. Since bullets couldn’t mysteriously change their direction, almost all the bullets hit the dozen or so Tal’darim in front. The ascendant was strong enough to survive.

The zealots weren’t.

13 zealots collapsed with their bodies riddled with bullets. Their shield generators were still intact, but the void energy input of the zealots wasn’t enough to maintain a plasma shield strong enough to take this amount of bullets in such a short amount of time. Once the plasma shield was gone, the armors didn’t last long either.

Still, the casualty didn’t frighten the Tal’darim. If anything it made them even faster. Hundreds of zealots stepped over the fading body of the thirteen zealots without any hesitation.

The short but precise bursts of Warden marine gauss rifles didn’t stop, and following another wave of firing another dozen zealots fell and died. The ascendant groaned as he felt his red plasma shield blinking continuously from dozens of impact in nearly a second or so.

The two rounds of firing took just seconds, but the zealots were fast. Their enhanced leg muscles pushed them forward and into the storm of bullets. The ones in front were immediately gunned down, but even with the firepower of the Warden marines they needed some time to kill the zealots.

It was these seconds that made sure the Tal’darim line, despite shrinking by the seconds, was always advancing. After ten seconds, the Tal’darim forces, already three fourth of its former size, was at a dangerous distance away from the terran.

The ascendant screamed in a mixture of bloodthirst and relief. Finally, after being unloaded on by a group of terran thieves for what seemed like forever, it was their time to do some damage. He held his right hand out, and a wave of destructive energy condensed at his fingertip. He pushed the energy forward.

One moment nothing happened. The next moment a bunker on the other side exploded. All four Warden marines inside were reduced to metal scrap.

Having an AI didn’t make the Warden units invincible.

The Tal’darim cheered even as they dropped another twenty bodies. The gauss rifles hit harder as the protoss got closer.

“Captain?” In the bunker, one of the mercenary marines demanded. Sitting back and taking a beating without fighting back wasn’t exactly in his menu.

The captain wasn’t listening to the marine. Instead, he was listening to someone on the other side of the radio. The marines could see him nodding before turning to the squad radio.

“Open fire.”

Everything the Raiders had started firing. The two siege tanks on this side blasted with their crucio shock cannons. The rounds landed in the center mass of the Tal’darim flank and exploded.

The tight formation of the Tal’darim allowed the siege tank rounds to do maximum damage. Several zealots were instantly evaporated with nothing remaining that proved they ever existed. Even their armor and shield generator were gone. The slayers either turned on their phasing armors, which absorbed most of the blast, or blinked away, but that was just the first wave.

Every single marine and marauder, whether they were mercenary, Warden, or Raider, and whether they were in the bunkers or not, opened fire almost at the exact same second. Gauss bullets and grenades slammed into the first line of Tal’darim, including the ascendant.

Zealots screamed as they fell. Terran weaponry pierced their shield, armor, and body, along with their pride. When the zealots tried to charge forward, they found themselves knocked off their feet by marauder concussive shells.

The ascendant made a desperate battle cry as he released the mind blast he was preparing and did his best to add those energy into his shield, but this time it was no longer from the Warden units, who were preciser but smaller in number. Instead, it was a storm of bullets, grenades, cannon rounds, and everything else.

He was barely holding the shield when a Crucio cannon round landed on him. Literally. The blast was simply too much for him to handle. With a desperate scream, the ascendant felt as if someone slammed him in the head with a hammer. As experienced as he was, he knew it was the result of his psionic power being punched back by brute force. For the moment he lost control of his void energy. Give him a few minutes and he could reassemble them, but he didn’t have a few minutes. He didn’t even have a few seconds before an explosion washed over his body.

The ascendant felt his skin melting. He knew he has lost everything. Even if he could survive this, he would be seen as a loser. A weakling. Someone who was defeated by terran with equal numbers didn’t deserve any respect. A single zealot could laugh upon him and no one would mind.

His thoughts were cut short as a light beam landed on him and brought him out of the slaughterhouse. Unlike the ascendant in the destroyer, this ascendant valued his own life a bit too much. Whether that was a good thing remained to be decided.

With the ascendant gone, the rest of the Tal’darim were stuck in an awkward situation. Zealots did all they could do charge forward, but everything the Raiders had slowed them down and even pushed them back.

Slayers made a last attempt to achieve victory. Fifty of them blinked at once and found themselves almost right beside the terran line. The two siege tanks unloaded two rounds in the middle of the slayers and, with the help of the biological units, killed half the slayers almost instantly, but the rest, either with luck or with their phasing armor, survived long enough to unload their particle disruptors on the bunkers.

Immediately, three bunkers fell, along with all twelve marines and marauders inside. However, that was it.

Four goliaths walked up from behind and added to the already menacing firepower. The slayers were quickly reduced to a bunch of broken suits leaking crimson void energy.

The rest of the zealots were forced to make a decision. The two havocs were down in the first round of siege tank fire. Their ranged support, the slayers, were gone. There were a few adepts, but their glaive cannons weren’t enough to change the tide. At least one hundred zealots remained, but that number was decreasing by the seconds.

A division appeared in the Tal’darim ranks. It was obvious that victory was nowhere to be reached. One third of the zealots, fanatics, wanted to keep charging and die trying. The other two third suggested falling back and regroup.

This led to an traffic jam. Some zealots from the back wanted to move forward while some in the front wanted to pull back. All the while the terran kept on firing. The result was eighty more dead zealots.

As the Tal’darim fled with their tails between their legs, the terran cheered. Everyone, mercenary or not, didn’t hesitate to use their radios to show how thrilled they were.

And they had the right to do so. They were mercenaries, and they were facing one of the most ruthless army in the sector. The fact that they charged head on into a wall of steel and only considered retreating when 75% of their warriors were dead was nothing less than astonishing. In a fair fight, at least an entire squad of twelve marines was needed to take down a single zealot, and there would still be casualties.

In this fight, there were surely casualties, but the positioning of the units was so good that when the battle began, the advantage of the terran units was fully utilized while the disadvantage of the protoss was amplified countless times.

And they had one woman to thank for that. Every unit knew they only managed to do so under the command of Jean Turner.

Jean allowed the Raiders to relax for half a minute before overriding the communication channel and muting all the speakers except herself.

“Calm down. That was just the first wave.” She rained on their parade. “But if we can keep this going, we can live through this. We will live through this.”