As Augustus boarded the transport shuttle that would return him to the Titan-class frigate, Raynor and Tychus approached, accompanied by two full squads of Revolutionary soldiers. With them were a personal data terminal and a damaged mechanical adjutant.
"A terminal that can't be cracked—hacking into its system is extremely difficult. This must be the highest level of encryption," Raynor said, carrying the mechanical adjutant on his back. Sparks shot from the broken cable trailing like an umbilical cord from the adjutant's fractured metallic abdomen.
The adjutant was a robot with a bronze-toned steel exoskeleton, designed with the appearance of a human female. These mechanical adjutants were typically used as artificial intelligence units to offer algorithm-driven recommendations to military commanders and colonial governors within command centers.
Currently, artificial intelligence across the Koprulu Sector remained quite primitive, making these adjutants seem rigid and mechanical in both behavior and function.
Although many believed that Umojan AI technology was more advanced, their export-model robots were also prone to frequent malfunctions.
At that moment, Tychus spoke up. "Jim thinks this thing might contain some hidden secrets about the Terran Dominion. You know how Jim is—he's always looking for something to nail the Dominion with."
"Nice work, Jim," Augustus said, clearly pleased. "Let's see what Umojan codebreakers can extract from this pile of junk. Even if there aren't many secrets inside, we might still come away with some Dominion military tech."
"Besides this scrap, I got my hands on quite a few good things," Tychus said. It was hard to believe that someone with such a rough and brutal face could make such an exaggerated wink.
"I found over ten tonnes of rare crystal ore in the lab. Looks like the people here were testing how those alien organisms react to crystals. That kind of mineral could fetch a fortune—enough to arm a fleet. And those machines too—they're worth a lot. Blowing them up would be such a waste."
"We can't haul those heavy things with us," Augustus replied. "But thank you, Tychus. I'll make sure you get a raise next time."
"You better keep your word," Tychus said, his half-squinted eyes suddenly lighting up with keen sharpness.
"...Alright," Augustus replied, not sounding entirely confident.
As the cargo and personnel were being loaded, more zerg specimens were brought before Augustus. Among them were a taxidermied skinned hound, a serpent-like creature, and a hulking beast with thick armor plating and enormous, sickle-like fangs.
The only thing they had in common—was that all of them were dead.
"Why the hell are we hauling back this frozen meat? So many valuable things got left behind for this!" said Mr. Tychus Findlay, master of facial expressions, nearly in tears.
"You planning to can them?" Raynor asked.
"Actually, I'm thinking of handing them over to a biotech company I know," Augustus explained. "The Mengsk Group has been funding that company for years. Far as I know, the Cerberus Project team should be able to cook me up some Warhounds—"
...
The residents of Victor V were still enduring the brutal extremes of their planet's weather. Whenever sandstorms swept through the wastelands, they would retreat into sturdy concrete shelters buried deep underground—completely unaware that a small fleet was lifting off above them, its three escort frigates and a light airship ascending amidst a blaze of brilliant plasma thrusters.
As the flagship-led formation entered hyperspace lanes, the people of Victor V remained huddled in their homes, hoping for the long-awaited arrival of supply ships carrying scarce essentials for the colony.
Years of hardship and poverty had worn down their dreams of a better life. Their crude observation equipment—and weary, dust-blinded eyes—were incapable of seeing the vast galactic expanse beyond the ashen storms.
By the time the fleet leapt into hyperspace, only forty-nine ships remained. All of them were crammed with loot—and people.
Four days later, the First Fleet of the Korhal Revolutionary Army emerged in a star system marked only by a string of numbers on the starmaps. The sun at the system's heart was dying, its light and heat slowly waning. Yet for hundreds of millions of years to come, it would still cast its glow across the system.
The fleet came to a halt in orbit above a toxic Earth-like planet. A few transport ships broke formation and made their way to the system's lone moon—a battered celestial body with a rich supply of high-energy gas minerals.
From the ship cargo bays, workers of the Revolutionary Army deployed space engineering rigs. On this pockmarked moon, scarred by ancient meteorite impacts and mountain ridges, they constructed a refinery to extract the gas—providing critical fuel for the fleet.
Augustus had chosen to make a brief stop in this system to await reinforcements from Korhal. Meanwhile, on Umoja, a fleet had already departed—consisting of the Hyperion, a Behemoth-class battlecruiser, six Sareng-class cruisers, and over ten thousand freshly departed Umojan volunteers.
Unlike Korhal's hastily retrofitted civilian vessels, the Umojan ships were true war machines.
According to promises made by the Umojan Homeland Defense Forces before launch, this fleet would rendezvous with Augustus in the second stellar quadrant in May.
On the first day of waiting for reinforcements, a vessel departed from Augustus's fleet toward the far end of the Koprulu Sector. It carried several Zerg specimens—including one live larva.
At the same time, within the borders of the Terran Dominion, on a star system functioning as a major hub for interstellar routes, a tech company named Cerberus Engineering was struggling. Their primary investor had abruptly pulled out.
Cerberus's shareholders were now at a crossroads: should they continue researching livestock and biotechnologies, or pivot into the rapidly growing fields of prosthetics and body modification?
Perhaps the wealthy elites of the Dominion would soon desire a cybernetically enhanced human army—soldiers equipped with varying degrees of mechanical augmentation. These modified troops would vastly outperform ordinary humans in stamina, strength, and combat capabilities.
But Cerberus, desperate for a way out, repeatedly hit walls with the federal government. The obstacle wasn't the corrupt, shortsighted bureaucrats refusing to fund or believe in the project—it was simply that the cost of upgrading a single soldier was seen as far too high. Compared to that, resocialized troops were already 'perfect' enough.
Augustus had no idea that Cerberus Engineering was eagerly waiting for a new patron to take over their venture—and whoever paid up would be 'Daddy'.
By the third day, one of Augustus's officers intercepted a 'Messenger' beacon—a device capable of traveling between star systems via hyperspace.
Only slightly larger than the smallest jump-capable probes, the Messenger resembled a titanium alloy football. Controlled by an intelligent program, it drifted through the void like a cosmic message in a bottle—forever carrying letters filled with love, longing, and memories.
Typically, it would stop briefly on a colony world, undergo maintenance by a service company, then lift off again—bearing a fresh load of messages and holograms.
Inside, it might contain a million standard letters—or simply a single video. The difference depended solely on whether the sender was willing to pay a hefty price to claim the beacon permanently.
When the beacon extended its tripod legs on the lower deck of the escort frigate and immediately began playing its message, Augustus finally smiled.
The first part was a short text:
[My dear Augustus, my brother.
It's been five months since we last saw each other. In my memory, it feels like an eternity.]
Then came the holographic image of Arcturus Mengsk, recorded two months earlier. Augustus assumed the beacon had been drifting through space for just as long, only recently locating them via its onboard positioning signal.
Arcturus appeared on screen wearing a thick, dark-brown cotton work jacket and a bright yellow safety helmet. His clothes were smudged with stubborn oil stains and drying mud, but his composed expression made it difficult to picture him as anything other than a nobleman—not a miner.
Arcturus was always composed. If he had been addressing anyone else, he would have put on a clean suit and made sure he looked impeccable—presenting the exact image he wanted others to see.
But speaking to Augustus, he seemed more casual, more at ease. The love Arcturus had for his family outweighed the hatred he carried for anything else.
"I just got a message from Mom," he began, his grey eyes drifting off-camera, as if he couldn't face the news—or his brother.
"Mom says I have a son. I thought she was joking. Turns out I laughed too early... and too inappropriately."
His expression twisted into something hard to describe. "It's been so long since I've seen her lose her temper like that—she roared at me like a lion."
"Even Angus took the chance to hide behind her and bark at me like a damn lapdog. I swear, I've never felt so humiliated in my life."
From the look of it, Augustus's older brother felt no joy at all about the situation. His expression suggested he'd just swallowed a plate of dead flies.
"We all thought there'd be no problem. Juliana should've been on birth control—unless she actually wanted to get pregnant. And I don't think I deserve more blame than she does," Arcturus said, revealing a rather shocking level of shamelessness that caught Augustus off guard.
"I've had time to think about it," he admitted, his voice heavy. "I wasn't there for the first seven years of that kid's life. Never lifted a finger as a father. But I guess... I should try. He's my heir, after all."
"This is hard for me. I never planned to settle down. I never wanted a family tying me down."
"Damn it. I can barely remember that night—and somehow this is my fault? Why didn't Juliana ever contact me? We… we have a child. If I had known he was already born, I never would've let her terminate the pregnancy," he said bitterly.
"I'm going to Umoja," he added after a pause. "If Valerian turns out to be anything like you were when you were little, maybe I'll find a way to get along with him."
Clearly, the whole affair had Arcturus deeply agitated. He vented his frustration freely, but quickly shoved it aside.
"Enough about that mess. Let's talk bad news."
"In the beginning, I hired a few skilled workers and took some of my old crew to the fringe worlds to look for mineral deposits. I was willing to go where others wouldn't, to do what others couldn't. With some expert analysis and a bit of luck, I discovered a small deposit of high-purity crystal. Just the value of that alone was enough to pay off all my debts."
"Then I found a bigger deposit—big enough to make me rich beyond imagination," Arcturus said. "But due to constant harassment from the Kel-Morian scum, I had to sell it off and head for more distant star systems. That's why you couldn't reach me at first."
"Based on an old survey report, I made my way to a remote world called Peak's End. After months of fruitless searching, I finally struck gold—well, metaphorically. The wealth there… it's so vast, our descendants couldn't spend it all. The mineral samples I've already extracted could buy half of Styrling. And I suspect the planet's entire core is one giant, glittering crystal vein."
"The Kel-Morian Combine and the Terran Dominion will both deploy legion-level forces for Peak's End. This could very well be the fuse for a second full-scale war. That joy—that discovery—completely washed away the shock and confusion I felt when I found out I had a son."
Augustus was genuinely happy for his brother, but what came next caught him completely off guard—in the best way possible.
"Augustus, I've got some good news for you," Arcturus said. "I believe, considering that first investment you made in me back then… you deserve two-fifths of this entire deposit."
Still trying to maintain a composed expression, Augustus glanced around the lower deck to make sure no one else was present. Then, finally, he couldn't help himself and cursed out loud.
"I figure you could use it," Arcturus continued, growing more serious. Over two months ago, the Korhal rebellion had not yet begun, but a man as perceptive as he was had already seen it coming—it was only a matter of time.
"Augustus, my beloved brother. As long as my team keeps uncovering new veins, your share will always be two-fifths. But if I die while exploring… give my portion to Mom and Dorothy."
Arcturus declared this with heartfelt sincerity—completely forgetting, it seemed, that he supposedly had a son now.
But it didn't matter. Valerian and his father were destined to be the perfect example of a loving, filial relationship. At least, someday.
Augustus, for his part, wasn't thinking of his poor nephew either. His mind was already racing with ideas on how to spend the money.
First, he would commission the construction of new warships, then expand his forces, and finally absorb promising tech companies like Cerberus Engineering into his ranks.
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