The transport fleet broke free from Meinhoff's gravity well, merging like a panicked school of fish into the temporary fleet composed of the Hyperion—anchored in deep orbit—and its few accompanying modified cargo freighters.
The battle-scarred hulls docked or berthed one after another. Airtight hatches hissed open, taking the last batch of survivors into a relatively safe metal embrace.
However, "safety" merely meant temporary distance from the warped monsters on the ground. The internal crisis facing the fleet was rapidly surfacing in a different form.
The hangar deck and multiple expanded compartments of the Hyperion were still packed with refugees evacuated from Tarsonis and Agria who had not yet been offloaded.
Meanwhile, the far larger tide of survivors newly escaped from Meinhoff filled every available space within the fleet's modified cargo freighters and large transport ships.
The total number of people carried by the entire fleet had suddenly leaped to an astonishing scale of over one hundred thousand. While this number itself meant many lives had been saved, the count of those left behind on Meinhoff or already lost to the infection remained staggering.
From a brutal perspective, being able to help this many people escape hell could be considered a blessing in disguise; at least the worst-case nightmare scenario—a massive outbreak of transformation within the enclosed vessels—had been avoided through the strictest screening procedures before boarding.
Yet the only benefit brought by this "luck" was that the vast majority of people had temporarily survived. The exponential growth of survival pressure that followed immediately inundated the entire fleet like a tsunami.
The shadow of resource depletion, like a pair of cold, rigid iron pincers, gripped the throat of this massive refugee fleet tightly.
Valerie walked through a temporary shelter converted from the lower cargo hold of a large transport ship. Originally used to load ore, it was now crammed with a dense mass of people.
The air was thick with a suffocating odor: the heavy body odor generated by thousands of people gathered together, the putrid stench wafting from wounds that could not be treated in time, the foul smell of excrement, the pungent scent of cheap disinfectant, and an almost tangible, invisible pressure called despair.
People crowded together like sardines on thin mats spread over the cold metal floor or curled up in the gaps of cargo racks, their expressions numb.
The only sounds were the continuous, weak crying of children, the suppressed groaning of the wounded, and sporadic arguments triggered by hunger and anxiety.
The scarcity of medical resources had reached a catastrophic level.
The limited medical stations across the ships had already been completely overwhelmed. Dr. Hanson and her tiny team were running themselves ragged between the vessels like firefighters, and the Hyperion's original medical system was under full duress.
Faced with the tidal wave of burns, lacerations, frostbite, infections, and various acute illnesses triggered by extreme terror and the harsh environment, the medicine and equipment they had on hand were a mere drop in the bucket.
Medical packs, antibiotics, analgesics, plasma substitutes, and even the most basic bandages and suture needles were disappearing at a visible rate.
Many wounded could only receive extremely rudimentary treatment, and infections and complications began to spread.
A soldier whose abdomen had been sliced open underwent suturing without anesthesia or effective hemostasis; his bloodcurdling screams caused the entire compartment to fall into dead silence, the cork he bit through soaked with blood and saliva.
The food and water situation was even more precarious.
The meager supplies hastily brought out from Meinhoff were undoubtedly a drop in the ocean for over one hundred thousand hungry mouths.
Strict rationing was immediately enforced, but the portions were compressed to the critical threshold required to maintain basic metabolism.
An adult could only claim one and a half high-energy nutrition bars and less than five hundred milliliters of recycled purified water per day.
Children and the wounded received slightly more, but it was still far from enough.
The nutrition bars were hard as rock and tasted like chalk, but in the face of bone-deep hunger, people even licked the crumbs off the packaging wrappers clean.
Drinking water was strictly regulated, washing was a luxury fantasy, and dry, peeling lips became a universal facial feature.
"When we left, the supplies we managed to salvage from Meinhoff amounted to less than five percent of our minimum estimated requirement," Matt Horner said during an emergency bridge meeting. Facing Raynor, Valerie, Dr. Hanson, and several grim-faced Raider officers, every digit on the inventory list he pulled up flashed in red.
"And this doesn't even account for the fleet's originally carried reserves, which are almost depleted. Based on the current total population and the absolute minimum survival consumption model, all categories of medical supplies—especially antibacterial agents—will be completely exhausted within forty-eight hours.
Food and fresh water... can support us for ninety-six hours, four days, at most. After four days, we will face a total humanitarian collapse."
The cold numbers on the screen plunged the briefing room into a prolonged, heart-seizing silence. Four days. In the vast, boundless universe, four days was not even enough time for them to navigate out of the current sector and find a reliable replenishment point.
"We cannot remain in Meinhoff's orbit; the Swarm or those... integrated variants could turn their attention to our conspicuous orbital target at any moment," Raynor broke the silence, his voice raspy with stress and fatigue as he pressed his brow hard with his fingers.
"And it's even more impossible to return to any core world of the Terran Dominion. Arcturus Mengsk would love nothing more than for a pack of trouble like us to vanish into deep space.
He will never open his ports to us, let alone when we are dragging over a hundred thousand mouths that need feeding, alongside the potential risk of undetected infection—which under Dominion law is enough to have us directly quarantined or even destroyed."
"What about other human colonies?" a Raider officer asked, clinging to a faint hope.
Matt shook his head bitterly and pulled up the star map. The human-controlled regions of the Koprulu Sector were covered by massive, piercing red markers.
"According to the last broad-spectrum distress signals and scouting data we received before evacuating, although the primary axis of the Swarm's assault is directed at the core worlds, its spreading speed is beyond imagination.
Mar Sara, Chau Sara, Tarsonis... the peripheral agricultural or mining colonies we know of that possess accommodation capabilities have either already fallen or are under the direct threat of the Swarm's vanguard, barely able to save themselves.
The remainder are either completely worthless wasteland planets or heavily fortified Dominion fortress worlds that will absolutely never open up to us."
The star map was entirely bleak, with human operational zones compressed miserably.
"In that case," Raynor's gaze moved slowly across the star map, finally settling on the other side of the display, an area marked by a soft golden halo, "we only have one direction left to go."
Everyone's eyes focused accordingly—the edge of the Protoss-controlled territory.