Humanity Endures

Part 12 - Bravery and Bloodshed | Chapter 1

There was a remarkable simplicity to her situation — she had to take the space station before her, and do so quickly, or else the entire Loyalist fleet would die. After years of being bogged down in the labyrinthine catastrophe that was Tekran politics — a vice that came with being on the Military Council — this clarity was, above all, refreshing.

A half-minute passed, and Felcamaxa's durable fleet of transport ships, advancing in spite of the furious attacks by the Traitor ships around them, arrived at the hostile station — a 'station' so large it was more akin to a small planet than any artificial construct — which was desperately attempting to flee the nimble marine craft using its own, comparatively pathetic maneuvering thrusters. Felcamaxa's force wasted no time getting down to business: as the marine fleet fired off thousands of TDPs and SDPs towards the panicking station below, hurling millions of Loyalist marines and enforcers — many of them Tehkrian — directly into the corridors and chambers of the Traitor station itself, Felcamaxa shook within her seat, as the Relentless fired her SDP directly towards a room that bordered the bridge of the Nahmatiixian EWCC itself. As they plummeted towards the most heavily defended portion of the station below, the chants of "Urkah" grew louder than ever before; everyone there faced unimaginable risk, and the Tehkrian marines would have it no other way. Though gauss rounds, point-defence, and hostile fighters inflicted some casualties upon the descending SDPs and TDPs before they had reached their quarry, the majority of the Loyalist ground forces slammed into their target unscathed, their pods quickly boring holes into the station below and injecting their vast force of soldiers into the station through these numerous, vicious breaches. The number of pods being thrown at the station looked akin to an omnidirectional, murderous hurricane, as the torrential downpour of marine-carrying pods threatened to obscure all sight of the rest of the battle for those Traitors trapped within the station below. Hundreds of SDPs swarmed the Traitor station while hundreds of thousands of Tactical Deployment Pods, almost invisible due to their small size, began to cover every inch of the station that wasn't already occupied by their larger brethren in an attempt to divert the Traitors' attention further. What few turrets the Nahmatiixian EWCC had were woefully insufficient to deter the assault alone, and indeed the most these turrets accomplished was destroying merely a dozen Loyalist SDPs in-transit; armies of Loyalist infantry, arriving intact, soon spilled out across the hull of the station in the millions, their armor reflecting the crimson glare of the hellish battle around them brilliantly, as millions more of their comrades prepared to battle their way inside. The defenders of the station stood little hope of resisting for longer than a few minutes, and Felcamaxa hadn't even landed yet.

This last fact, however, soon changed; the roar of retro-rockets heralded a landing, and the next second Felcamaxa's SDP shook violently again — the device had latched itself onto the pitiable station, and a set of fifteen plasma-based drills were deployed from the surface of the SDP shortly afterwards. Kicking into action with such force that the vibrations of their drilling could be felt everywhere on the poorly-insulated SDP, the array of close-ranged plasma throwers cut into the armor and hull of the EWCC, ejecting more and more molten detritus into the bloodied ether with each second, while also bringing the occupants of the station closer to the fury of the ten thousand eager marines who lay in wait within the SDP — they would not have to wait long.

Felcamaxa's SDP, after a few more moments' worth of waiting, finally reached, breached, and depressurized the rooms adjacent the bridge of the Traitor EWCC; the roar of air — and the occasional Traitor — slamming into the walls of the SDP as they hurtled into the vacuum created a glorious cacophony that filled the ears of everyone on the SDP's bridge. As a prolonged depressurization would interfere with the speed of the assault, Felcamaxa's SDP, like all the others across the station, quickly deployed a thick layer of adhesive gel over its fresh breaches to re-pressurize the station below, before a set of boarding tubes rapidly extended from the SDP, penetrated the permeable gelatinous seals, and snaked into the now-exposed interior of the station — ready to pour down these tubes were all ten thousand of Felcamaxa's marines and enforcers. While the Loyalist boarding tubes, weathering desperate gauss fire, began releasing a great quantity of smoke to shield the inevitable attack, the SDP above began deploying thousands of marines, rack by rack, directly into the hallways and rooms station below. The Traitors within soon found themselves beset by a vicious, nigh-unstoppable foe, all while the tanks and other vehicles onboard her SDP rolled out onto the hull of the station itself and began trading fire with the limited number of turrets there; if the hull was secured, any counter-boarding action would become much more difficult for the Traitors. As there was not realistically enough room in such a tight space for all of the SDP's ten thousand marines, many of these soldiers were placed into adjacent rooms or sent out onto the hull of the station to support the vehicles there, being forced to find their own way into the Traitor station. In all, with so many having already breached the interior of the EWCC, there was little doubt in Felcamaxa's mind that her assault would meet with initial success.