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SCL Chapter 141: When Tarsonis Screamed
🕑 Added 2025-07-06 16:41:02 +0000 UTC“Listen up. I know every one of you is a top-tier fighter,” Tychus said, reining in his usual swagger. He had a mouth full of wisecracks mos
“Listen up. I know every one of you is a top-tier fighter,” Tychus said, reining in his usual swagger. He had a mouth full of wisecracks most of the time, but when the situation called for it, he could be surprisingly grounded. “What’s coming next should be the easy part.”
“Gentlemen, war is calling.” His voice was calm, almost amused. “Old Mengsk might say we’re fighting for freedom, justice, democracy—or whatever other noble-sounding, intangible ideals. But when it comes down to it, we’re here to kill.”
He let out a chuckle.
No one responded.
If this had been back in the days of the Heaven’s Devils, Augustus wouldn’t have needed to say a word—Harnack and Josephine would already be on the comms, boasting, rallying, stirring up trouble. Sometimes, Tychus actually missed those days. Just sometimes.
“But killing and looting? That’s what we do best. A man ought to do what a man’s made for.” As a few of the Styrling Wolfhunters turned toward him, Tychus was busy fishing a fresh cigar out of the supply unit in his power armor.
“If you want revenge, you’d better channel the ferocity your ancestors had when they hunted wolves. If the Terran Confederacy really dropped that many nukes on Korhal IV, there won’t even be ashes left of the forests in your homeland.”
He could see a few of the Wolfhunters tighten their grip on their Gauss rifles, jaws clenched, yet they said nothing.
'Boring bunch.' Tychus couldn’t help but sigh inwardly. He missed the rowdy chaos of the old days. Honestly, even recruiting a gang of scumbags would’ve been more fun than leading this band of silent soldiers—at least those guys always had something to say.
Still, when it came to standing shoulder to shoulder in battle, putting your life in someone else’s hands, these determined Revolutionary Army soldiers were absolutely the kind you could trust without question.
“Sir, mission briefing says our objective is the capital city of Tarsonis,” one officer finally spoke up, picking up Tychus’s thread. “But the central zone is a densely populated commercial district.”
“Exactly. That’s where we’ll be engaging Tarsonis’s defense forces in urban combat,” Tychus replied. “Unless the locals have gone completely insane, after these past few hours, they’ve either run far away or are hiding in their homes. If a few civilians get caught in the crossfire... well, that’s just their bad luck.”
“Places without civilians? Fortresses and military strongholds.”
There was silence again. With the constant risk of their transport being blown out of the sky at any moment, no soldier could truly remain at peace.
“This is nothing for Heaven’s Devils. If any of you want to hear about my glory days fighting alongside Augustus Mengsk, old Tychus could spin you quite a tale.” He glanced around, smiling as if this were a campfire story rather than a deadly drop. “Back on Turaxis II, now that was a real mess—ten times worse than what we’re facing now.”
This naturally drew the attention of the Revolutionary Army soldiers. To them, the Heaven’s Devils were nothing short of living legends.
While Tychus was busy spinning his tale, the Little Devil had already arrived above the city of Tarsonis. The city was still cloaked in night, and the dense anti-aircraft firepower blotted out the stars. Autocannons, firing hundreds of rounds per second, were unloading with reckless abandon.
The Little Devil and three other transports weaved through the steel forest of high-rise buildings, dodging anti-air fire while searching for an opening to land.
Despite the Korhal Revolutionary Army giving no prior signs of launching a ground invasion, the central district of Tarsonis had somehow thrown up a full defense grid in less than two hours. Fortifications, barricades, artillery emplacements, squads of Arclite tanks, Terran Marines, and Tarsonis Army units had transformed the city center into a hardened bastion.
All for the 'thorough', 'secure', and 'considerate' protection of the Old Families, the Federal Parliament, and the wealthy elite.
Tychus’s unit was ultimately forced to land inside a research station just outside the central district. His troops swiftly neutralized the scattered resistance inside and planted a Korhal Revolutionary Army flag in the middle of the facility.
They lit a fire on their way out—though it fizzled out shortly after.
Near the research station was a cargo offloading platform for a trade starport. While copying the research data, Tychus helped himself to a few valuables, as usual. Inside a shipment bound for New Sydney in the outer rim, he discovered a stash of old relics, including a vintage record player and an antique-style revolver.
“Tch—an old-school revolver. Mengsk would love this kind of trinket. Word is, his trophy room’s filled with antiques and melee weapons from a century ago. He’s especially fond of handing out guns to the officers he values,” Tychus muttered, inspecting the finely crafted revolver, its metal engraved with ornate patterns, while en route to a Terran Confederacy command center.
It was a Colt military single-action revolver—an antique several centuries old. Ammunition for it was rare and precious. But despite its age, the weapon still packed a punch—it could easily blow the skull off a wild bull.
Then Tychus paused, a thought creeping in. He had never given a gift to anyone in his life—except women.
It felt… weird.
...
The hemisphere where Tarsonis City was located had turned away from the sun, and the meteor showers were more numerous than ever before. Massive orbital station wreckage—some the size of cities—came crashing down from the sky, lighting up the atmosphere like falling suns.
The sky shimmered with bright orange flares, dazzling like newborn stars. Their brilliance surpassed Polaris by hundreds of times—some even outshone the sun for brief moments. These were battlecruisers plunging into low orbit.
All through the night, air raid sirens wailed, mercilessly tormenting the already strained nerves of the people of Tarsonis. The sharp alarms and occasional deafening explosions echoed overhead. Chaos and mass exodus had become unstoppable. Men packed their families into vehicles, dragging suitcases and children as they fled the brightly lit city districts.
Looting of weapon shops and department stores had plunged entire areas into flames, with thick black smoke rising into the sky. More and more citizens became convinced that the rebels and government forces were already clashing within the city itself.
Chaos. Screaming. Wailing.
By the third hour of continuous alarms, seven major cities—including the Tarsonis capital—had descended into total hysteria.
The skies were jammed with flying cars and private yachts, while ground-level transport networks were in absolute disarray. Traffic accidents, gridlocks, and subsequent conflicts erupted one after another. The death toll from injuries and accidents quickly surged into the tens of thousands.
And yet, not a single rebel soldier had set foot on Tarsonis.
The planet’s order had already crumbled.
Even the most dutiful police officers no longer knew whether they were supposed to evacuate civilians or stop them from fleeing the city. The deputy police chief was furious—over 70% of Tarsonis’s police force had vanished, and his superiors were busy hiding in fortified underground 'conference halls' under the pretense of holding emergency meetings.
Due to mismanagement and the sheer incompetence of certain officials, the Tarsonis administration knew nothing of the actual battlefield conditions—only that the enemy came from rebel forces based in Korhal.
Everyone outside the Federal Parliament and the Cabinet was left in the dark.
They had no idea how many warships were floating silently above them in high orbit. The Confederate Navy Command kept insisting that the advantage was on their side—but hours had passed, and the sirens still hadn’t stopped.
Nearly all losses stemmed from within Tarsonis itself.
The rebels had merely moved their fleet into orbit.
Though the rebels from Korhal had yet to launch a single attack on any city or major settlement, every passing minute was inflicting damage that would take dozens of times longer to repair.
No one—neither officials nor civilians—truly understood what was happening.
The only information they had was that a large-scale rebellion had broken out on Korhal IV, but no one had ever imagined that the rebels would possess the strength to launch a surprise assault on Tarsonis.
During the four years of the Guild Wars, even the Kel-Morian Combine had only managed to push as far as the outskirts of the Sarus system’s core worlds. Their fleets had always been on the defensive against the Confederate Navy, rarely taking the initiative in battle.
The Combine had its own core worlds and mining colonies to defend. Its leadership couldn’t possibly afford to gamble everything on an offensive against Tarsonis.
Now, even the drunks who used to shout about politics in the bars began to realize that the Korhal Rebellion was no longer a matter of geopolitics, nor something that would simply burn out within a year or two.
The Korhal question was likely to haunt the Terran Confederacy for as long as the regime itself endured. The chance for compromise had become vanishingly small. One of two outcomes seemed inevitable: either the people of Korhal would establish a sovereign state outside the reach of the Confederacy, or the Confederacy’s executioners would exterminate them all.
A brutal truth now stared the people of Tarsonis in the face—those who had lived through this nightmare.
Tarsonis could fall.
