"This is my finest accomplishment. I have saved my species."
— Telzivax "The Monstrous" Tekran, his last words before his death by execution. His self-inflicted war ended shortly afterwards.
***
Within minutes the battle would be unsalvageable, unless someone were able to miraculously silence the endless torrent of messages bombarding every Loyalist in the system.
Smiling wryly to herself from within her combat suit, Felcamaxa then thought, "Enter, myself."
Since she and the army's forces had breached into the battle, being informed by a courier vessel of the debilitating mental assault that the Loyalist fleet had suffered from, Prime General Felcamaxa, and every soldier amongst her marine fleet, had disabled their communications implants. As such, Felcamaxa could not watch as the Relentless, her flagship, drew closer to Nahmatiix's EWCC — she could not interface with her ship's cameras — though she still acted with the sort of sick glee that a seasoned, combat-loving soldier feels upon getting a chance to join the fray that they've so sorely missed. Surrounding her troop-transporting flagship were one thousand other cruiser-sized troop transports of the Imperatorial Army, filled to the brim with excitedly whooping marines, all of whom relished the opportunity to participate in a battle they had feared they would do nothing in. As they had breached all but on top of their target, they would soon have their chance to join the bloody fray.
"Urkah!" exclaimed the marines and enforcers around Felcamaxa, their voices but a minor part of the ten-million-strong chorus that sang throughout her fleet, accompanied by countless frenzied, bloodthirsty cheers from those who were even more excited or drugged; Felcamaxa, her enforcer lungs capable of generating roars equal to those of twenty marines, wasted no time in joining the battle-loving chorus.
Her Strategic Deployment Pod, despite being held tight by the metallic limbs of its host transport ship, shook violently; the bone-chilling grinding of metal briefly drowned out the chants of "Urkah" as a Nahmatiixian gauss round scraped against the hull of the device, but as it became clear a moment later that the thing was more-or-less intact, the cheering and chanting, interspersed with excited laughter, grew louder than ever before. Her marines had just been shot at, almost killed, and they were loving it. The Nahmatiixian warships defending their recently up-armored EWCC attempted to stem the tide of Loyalist transports, but wherever these were not boarded and commandeered by the vanguard of Loyalist craft, they were simply insufficient to repel so many heavily-armored vessels that had appeared so suddenly, and as such, only a few dozen troop transports were destroyed; any Traitor reinforcements were minutes away, and Felcamaxa's forces would have landed by then.
Felcamaxa's SDP — a deployable device containing around ten thousand soldiers for purposes of boarding ships or attacking planets — was likely quieter than it would have been if it were an enforcer-only Heavy SDP, though Felcamaxa did not mind. Deeming an "HSDP" too much of a risk to bring into a serious engagement — if it were shot down, the number of lost enforcers would be crippling — and recognizing that her marines were not lacking in enthusiasm or skill, Felcamaxa harbored no regret over her tactical choice; this was good, as Felcamaxa preferred to die without regret. Having deactivated her communications implants in the wake of the Nahmatiixian cyberattack, and as she was about to fight for the first time in years, Felcamaxa's mind was perfectly at peace — more at peace, in fact, than it had been for some time, despite her being embroiled in a pair of wars. Her numerous hearts rhythmically and steadily pounded in her twice-armored chest, protected both by metal and by carapace; her quartet of trunk-like arms rested comfortably within her suit and the SDP's restraints, and in their hands comfortably rested weapons capable of killing dozens with minimal effort. Her hulking form lay in its seat, a seat which could give way and propel her into a Traitor-filled space station at any moment, where there would inevitably emerge the greatest slaughter that the human civil war had seen so far: Felcamaxa could not be more in her element.
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.
Sure enough, the overwhelming force of her marines' abrupt arrival smashed through any defences that may have been in place. Once the contents of her SDP had been emptied into the wavering station below, Felcamaxa and the others on the bridge of the SDP were similarly catapulted through the inner workings of the device until they were spat out into an operations room adjacent to the EWCC's bridge. These last few soldiers arrived at the center of a rapidly-subsiding firefight created by Felcamaxa's marines and enforcers, and perpetuated by what few stubborn Nahmatiixian defenders remained.
Being thrown with such force that when she arrived, she dented the ground beneath her titanic feet, Felcamaxa pivoted to face what her implants identified as a Traitor marine and brought two of her lower arms down upon the unfortunate fellow; with a panicked yelp, followed by the visceral crunching of bone, flesh, and metal, and accompanied by a gory display that did much to repaint Felcamaxa's white armor, the defender was reduced to nothing but a stain on the floor. Her two bloodied arms grasping lightning cannons, and with the two above them hefting MMMs, Felcamaxa eagerly strode forward into the fray, only to have her ears graced by shouted reports of "Room Clear!" and "Confirmed!" by her fellow marines and enforcers — Felcamaxa's troops had worked so quickly that their commanding officer had missed the fight almost entirely. Skill, superior positioning, and sheer numbers had rendered whatever defences and armor that the Traitors had hidden behind moot; all that was left to do was to seize the command center of the station itself, which was directly adjacent to the room that Felcamaxa had breached into.
It had appeared that, thankfully, none of those Traitors Felcamaxa had encountered attempted to surrender; this was good, as trying to deal with prisoners would have only slowed down her boarding action, and allowed her foes more time to regroup. Worse still, Felcamaxa would have been unable to kill those who surrendered, as doing so would cause political catastrophe for Lassarha as well as galvanizing those Traitors who were considering surrender into fighting to the death; it seemed that even on the battlefield, Felcamaxa never could truly escape the trappings of politics.
The grey-painted room around her was somewhat rectangular, comprising of many rows of desks interspersed by crates filled with circuitry and computers; its tall ceiling, nearly touched by rows of servers, was slightly slanted inwards, and just a few dozen meters away from Felcamaxa was a fortified door that led to the bridge of the EWCC itself. As her marines rushed to take up breaching positions around this door, Felcamaxa thought of her forces' success elsewhere on the station. Though communication with the rest of those soldiers who had attacked separate sections of the station was impossible thanks to the disabling of all communications implants, Felcamaxa, thanks to the superior number and quality of her forces, could safely assume that at best, they had wiped their opponents off the face of the galaxy, or that at worst, they were occupying the attention of any remaining defenders while she worked to deactivate the stream of information crippling the Loyalist fleet. Felcamaxa believed that if the bridge's resistance — or lack thereof — was anything to go by, the former was likely.
Advancing towards the door that led to the EWCC's bridge, where roughly eighty of her soldiers were positioning themselves — the rest, numbering in the hundreds, were entrenching themselves and securing the entrances to Felcamaxa's new position. Felcamaxa took care to ensure that her enforcers had taken positions in front of her marines to provide cover for the latter, though as all of her people in that room were the galaxy's best, being well-trained and in a few rare cases even battle-hardened, she didn't see a soldier out of place.
The bridge of the station only had one door, and it was beyond likely that this door was fortified and protected to an unassailable extent; as such, Felcamaxa and her demolitions marines laid the foundation for a new door as they planted a series of explosives along one of the bridge's walls. With a wave of the hand, Felcamaxa directed six entire squads of marines to take up position behind this doomed wall in two lines, the first rank kneeling to allow both lines to fire simultaneously, when it came to that; while the whole scene appeared quite Napoleonic, Felcamaxa knew that it would be effective. With armor being as good as it was, commanders had to maximize their force's lethality if they wanted to clear a room quickly, often trusting in their own armor, the shock of an explosion, and the surprise of their arrival, to resist counter-fire — this occasionally led to the adoption of archaic-looking tactics. The pages of history were stained with human blood, and Felcamaxa found them a surprisingly good reference for the present.
Marching up to the locked door of the room, Felcamaxa exclaimed to whoever was on the other side, "If any of you in there want to surrender, step out now. If your superiors won't let you surrender, get down and make damned sure you don't have a weapon when we enter. You have ten seconds to either lay down your arms, or make your peace."
Her genetically-enhanced ears trained on the room, Felcamaxa could hear sporadic, hushed conversation — most of which sounded fearful, before this was broken by the authoritative roar of a female officer, "We stand for Heralax, or we die for Heralax, but we will not surrender for Lassarha!"
A cheer of approval could be heard from behind the door; Felcamaxa sighed disappointedly.
Turning to the marines beside her, Felcamaxa gestured with her top-left hand "Breach on five," receiving a flurry of nods as an answer — she was ever conscious that with each second that passed, the Loyalist navy suffered more and more extremely, and she was determined to make her insertion as soon as possible as a result.
"Ten!" Felcamaxa began counting, the space in-between her counts being punctuated by tense breathing from whoever was on the other side; the clattering of guns as they fell to the ground could also be heard.
"Nine," she continued, revving her MMMs as she did so; the discharge of a coil-pistol could be heard coming from the bridge, followed by a series of shocked yelps, and then the roar of "If you act like a coward, you will die like a coward!" from the same officer as before.
"Eight!" Felcamaxa announced; someone in the bridge, a male voice, asked openly "You ask us to fight when we're certain to die doing so, and then you execute someone without so much a word of warning? It does not matter if our blood stains the controls, Lassarha's people will take this station!"
The shifting of feet could be heard, followed by the report of another gunshot, and more shocked gasps, as the Nahmatiixian officer replied, "Traitor!"
"Seven!" Felcamaxa continued; A lower-pitched voice, a female one but not that of the officer, then yelled, "I will not stand by and watch this madness!" Another coilgun was fired, but before the thud of a third body crashing to the floor had even been heard, a chaotic flurry of shots gripped the air. After this, only hurried, hushed conversation could be heard, besides the grunting of those who were wounded but not quite dead.
"Six!" Felcamaxa announced, her counting slowing to the point where she only counted down roughly every four seconds. Behind the door, the clang of weapons against metal, so widespread it sounded almost akin to rainfall, could be heard, followed by a voice pleading, "Don't kill us! We surrender!"
The next moment, the door to the bridge burst open, and Felcamaxa's enforcers who were standing in front of this door rushed in to ensure that the room was, in fact, secure. From where she stood, Felcamaxa could only see a gaggle of marines and unarmored desk-jockeys in jumpsuits kneeling on the ground, their weapons collecting dust in a hastily-assembled pile, the wounded among their number clutching their wounds as their bodies attempted to mend them, while the still-bleeding corpses of four people could be seen strewn about. One of these was a well-armored, high-ranking female marine, whose body had been shredded by a hail of gunfire; two others were desk-jockeys, one male and one female, who had been killed with shots to their unarmored heads, and the last was a soldier, their bloodied armor perforated with rifle bullets, who looked as if they had been killed during their vicious officer's last stand. Of all the people in that room, somehow, Felcamaxa respected the dead marine officer the most: they were the least craven, and the one most similar to Felcamaxa herself.
As disappointed groans emerged from those marines and enforcers who were looking forwards to the breaching action, those among Felcamaxa's party who were cooler-headed rushed into the room and took those who had surrendered prisoner, shackling them and corralling them into a corner of the place where they got in no one's way, while also forcing them to deactivate their communications implants to prevent them from informing on their captors. Those who were wounded were given limited supplies of medicine and told to treat their own wounds, as the time of medic marines was too precious to waste on those who would not fight even if healed.
Entering into the room herself, Felcamaxa commanded the technician marines who had accompanied her to inspect the room and find a way to shut off the debilitating broadcast; being experts trained in the art of accomplishing such tasks, they located the requisite console nearly immediately. Though Felcamaxa would have loved to use the device to force Loyalist propaganda on the Traitor fleet in return, the console and communications array had been hastily, yet robustly rigged before her arrival to prevent such a possibility. The only thing there was left to do was to turn the broadcast off, start filling the civilian airwaves with non-crippling Loyalist propaganda, and then destroy the console, saving what remained of the Loyalist fleet in the process. Quickly gaining the override code from one of her many, grateful, prisoners, Felcamaxa had one of her technicians perform the task, and mere moments after the soldier had arrived and done their job, they turned to Felcamaxa and nodded assuredly — the Traitor cyberattack had been thwarted, though at great cost to the Loyalists.
Returning the nod approvingly, Felcamaxa reactivated her own communications implants, and found that her mind remained clear of Traitor propaganda, with only operational data and messages of thanks bombarding her at present. Commanding her technician to move aside, Felcamaxa then lumbered over to the desk, raised her right leg, and kicked the device with such force that it was torn from the floor and violently embedded itself in a nearby wall. This being done, she ordered her soldiers across the station to sabotage the parts of the station that dealt with emergency messaging — even if the station was retaken, another crippling barrage of propaganda wouldn't be possible until after weeks of repair.
Now that the broadcast was stopped for good, Felcamaxa encouraged the rest of her marines to reactivate their communications devices, and dispatched squads of marines to the rest of the now Loyalist-owned station, to inform the rest of her soldiers that they too could activate their comms implants — her plan had succeeded, and the Loyalist fleet had regained the ability to fight. While those Loyalist vessels who had entirely disabled their communication to continue fighting were slower to re-enable it, the mere fact that Felcamaxa's fleet had seized the EWCC encouraged even the most cynical captains to reconnect themselves, and as all the ships of the Loyalist armada were restored to normal, the minds of their crews no longer ravaged by the stream of worthless information that had assailed them, the battle's nature shifted from that of a desperate, failing defence to a stalemate — a blood-soaked, death-filled, nigh-untenable stalemate, but a stalemate nonetheless. With adrenaline and MECS coursing through her veins, Felcamaxa certainly didn't need it, but the minor victory had given her a sliver of hope.
It was not even a few more moments before yet another piece of good news had arrived: Felcamaxa knew that Nahmatiix had an army, and wanted to know where it was — in that instant, she learned the answer to her question was "en-route to my current position."
Accompanied by a terrifyingly large escort of nearly half a million warships, more than two thousand Traitor troop transports lumbered through the system, their weapons readied and marines doubtlessly preparing for an imminent attack as they moved to retake the EWCC from Felcamaxa's forces. Though her transport fleet had already retreated back to the safety of the Remnant, Felcamaxa had no intention of even trying to flee the station she was on, for not only was there a chance that she could wield the station against the Traitors some other way, but the Traitors always stood a chance of repairing the broadcast if the EWCC were to fall into hostile hands; Felcamaxa's sabotage may not have been enough, for even her technicians didn't know exactly how the feat had been accomplished. Commanding her forces to entrench themselves within the station, while her armored vehicles and troops on the hull of the EWCC braced themselves to engage Traitor SDPs and TDPs before they had a chance to deploy their marines, Felcamaxa strode out into her occupied operations room just as the last few pockets of Traitor resistance across the Nahmatiixian EWCC were crushed. Being outnumbered by more than four-to-one, Felcamaxa's defence would have to be tenacious, brilliant, and endlessly fortunate to even last more than an hour; knowing her, however, one would have to say that all of the mentioned characteristics were guaranteed, and that both the Traitors and the Loyalists were in for the fiercest, and possibly last, fight of their lives.
There could be no question — unless the Tehkrian armada fought through the entire Traitor navy to come to her aid, a situation that was as unlikely as Heralax Tekran spontaneously surrendering, the upcoming battle would be a last stand. Felcamaxa, however, was content with this — it might be her last stand, she realized, but with such stakes and with such a superior foe, it would be nothing less than supremely glorious. Felcamaxa was not the type of soldier who would shy away from death or slaughter — whether or not this was moral was no concern to her, for she had a duty to perform, and she would see it done. Every Traitor killed would help to carve the names of herself and of all of her soldiers into the annals of human history forevermore, if human history was to survive the war with the alien, and she would prefer that to a dishonorable, costly retreat which could undo all of that which she had just wrought. Turning to the Nahmatiixers that had surrendered to her and given her the bridge without a fight, Felcamaxa spoke plainly, "If you stay here, when a battle erupts, you will die — take whatever escape pods this station has, and leave before that happens."
Her captives began to thank her, but Felcamaxa interrupted them, yelling, "Go! Your marine fleet certainly isn't waiting!"
This being said, the surrendered Nahmatiixers made for the door, thanking their captor as they passed before sprinting towards the nearest escape pod. Many of these freed prisoners were eyed suspiciously by the marines outside, but with communications back online, these marines received Felcamaxa's order to stand down — as surrendered Nahmatiixers all across the station hastily and fearfully fled in escape pods, none were harmed. This, of course, threatened to make the fighting all the more indiscriminate once the Traitors finally reached the EWCC, though that was something the battle-inclined Felcamaxa was not only willing, but happy, to accept.
Keeping the EWCC from Nahmatiixian hands for as long as was possible was crucial, and while she could simply destroy the station beneath her feet, an inspired Felcamaxa imagined a much greater use for the edifice. Checking with her highest-ranking technicians to ensure the feasibility of her scheme, and receiving a reply that was not only positive, but excited, Felcamaxa wasted no time in compiling and dispatching a textcomm-borne order to all of her technicians and hackers. Her plan desired to make use of the EWCC's unique nature in that not only did it control the galaxy's communication, but Nahmatiix's EWCC also coordinated the fire of the Nahmatiix system's defensive stations. Though the Traitors had prevented it from assaulting the minds of every Traitor combatant by severely limiting its ability to send "emergency" messages, Felcamaxa could still, in theory, use exploit the station's fire-coordination infrastructure to seize control of every Nahmatiixian defensive platform, manned or unmanned — they could be overridden just the same — and set them against their allies. As the Traitors had only prevented their station from sending overriding messages or commands to humans themselves, not digital systems — such as those that managed Nahmatiix's defensive network — forcing the EWCC to hack their own defence grid in such a way was easy. Felcamaxa did not hesitate to order the act done, for with every second that passed, tens of thousands of Loyalists were slaughtered in engagements across the battlefield.
Of course, Felcamaxa was prevented from doing much else: Heralax's forces had switched to communicating with each other through another Traitor EWCC above yet another Traitor world, so Felcamaxa's army could not attack, alter, or shut down the renegades' strategic network, nor could she do much else to hamper them for that matter. Though reversing the allegiance of the system's stations was all that she could accomplish besides sparing the Loyalists from Heralax's information assault, Felcamaxa believed she had done enough to ameliorate the Loyalists' poor fortune. However, the moment the station was destroyed or recaptured, the Traitors would be able to cut off Felcamaxa's override and restore control of their defensive stations to their own people: Felcamaxa's last stand now had a purpose grander than prolonged survival, and both she, and her millions-strong army, were more committed to it than ever.
For every moment that the station continued to control the defences of Nahmatiix, thousands of Traitor vessels and hundreds of thousands of Traitor sailors would be annihilated by the same defences they had been hiding behind just a few minutes earlier. While the floors and decks of her station were painted with human blood, so too would the skies of Nahmatiix be; even if she and her army were to be sacrificed, such a bold action could turn the tide of the entire war for the Loyalist forces, and so long as there was a chance of that occurring thanks to her, Felcamaxa would not willingly give up an inch of metallic ground.
Ordering reinforcements to the bridge, Felcamaxa, lumbering forwards, brandished her lethal quartet of weapons in an inspiring show of force, while her marines entrenched and deployed themselves throughout the sizeable chamber. Machine guns with plentiful ammunition supplies were set up; kill zones and crossfires were prepared; every enforcer sought to find a good firing position, often disregarding cover entirely as they themselves were cover, while swarms of Loyalist marines scampered towards fortifiable locations. The entire chamber was filled with the reverberating clang of metal boots against the floor; a few seconds later, and as Felcamaxa's forces had reached their positions and readied their weapons, it became so quiet that the only thing one could hear was the eager breathing of over a thousand marines.
Felcamaxa, taking cover behind a decorative structural pillar, even though it was not necessary for an enforcer, watched through the eyes of her forces on the hull of the EWCC as a wave of Nahmatiixian SDPs approached; there were so many of the things that she could barely see the naval battle beyond them, and before such a mighty, innumerable force, she even felt a pang of fear momentarily grip her hearts, before this pang was utterly crushed by MECS. Nevertheless, Felcamaxa being even mildly afraid was indicative of how desperate the situation was, and when she became aware that she had felt scared, Felcamaxa became terrified; her numerous hearts, beating with such force such that they sounded akin to a marching column of infantry, seemed to echo throughout the chamber — if she was to survive the Traitor attack, she did not see how, and in that moment, her irrepressible instinct for self-preservation threatened to undermine her heroism.
An instant later, as the very floor of the station began to quake under the force of countless Nahmatiixian TDPs and SDPs impacting the already-battered hull of the EWCC, the rush of approaching friendly reinforcements was drowned out by the deafening roar of a military plasma drill boring its way into the station's hull. The marines around Felcamaxa wasted no time in shouting obscene insults towards their deaf-eared foe, or chanting "Urkah!" with greater intensity than ever before, as they secured themselves for the imminent depressurization, though even this was drowned out by the clamor of melting metal. After another half-minute, the Traitors' drills pierced the walls of their own station, gouging an array of molten holes into the floor before they ceased operation; the roar of air being sucked out into space competed with the shriek of extending boarding tubes, many of them penetrating through the same breaches that Felcamaxa had forced open earlier, though this did nothing to worry Felcamaxa's battle and MECS-hardened fighters. As the Traitor boarding tubes came into view, the sound of vengeful gunfire erupting from the barrels of thousands of Loyalist weapons filled the air just as waves upon waves of Nahmatiixian marines shot into the room; these marines appeared, only to be cut down instants later by an overwhelming wall of organized firepower. This same bloody battle had spread to every deck and every room across the gargantuan station as marine slew marine in a brutal conflict whose ferocity easily matched that of the naval war above. Millions of men and women were set against each other, while each and every one of them were willing to die for their causes; under such circumstances, the only thing that could be certain was that many of them would. With Felcamaxa's forces being skilled, exceptionally-equipped, well-positioned, and ready to die before they even considered retreat, the Traitors made few gains in the first few moments of clash; for each minute of battle, thousands of Nahmatiixian ships were annihilated by their own defences, and the Loyalist fleet, once on the verge of destruction, began to reverse its fortunes.
Right before Felcamaxa, a trio of traitorous marines, falling from the breached ceiling, slammed into the ground, weapons raised, while they immediately began to advance to cover. Felcamaxa wasted no time in emptying over a hundred MMM rounds into the trio, and as their bloodied, shredded bodies fell to the smouldering, plasma-scored ground, Felcamaxa realized that out of all the ways she could die in this glorious war, this was among those most useful to humanity. Holstering her lighting cannons and placing her MMMs at her sides, Felcamaxa clenched her blood-stained hands into fists and made off towards a group of six Nahmatiixian marines who found themselves in the unfortunate position of being out of cover. Reaching the surprised group in less than a second, Felcamaxa, her enforcer-lungs granting her roar preternatural strength, roared, "For the Empire! For Lassarha! For humanity!"
Felcamaxa then crushed those before her into gory piles of pulp, smashing the Traitors aside like playthings before they even had a chance to draw weaponry heavy enough to dent her armor; the betrayers were all dead within seconds.
Her helmeted head awash with the blood of her foe, her mind flooded with a furious surge of MECS and adrenaline, Felcamaxa could not help but think that the beginning of the end was sweeter than she could have imagined, as she ripped through waves of Traitors with maniacal brutality.