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SCL Chapter 122: No Room for Retreat
🕑 Added 2025-06-18 02:46:41 +0000 UTCOn the space battlefield—woven from brilliance and death—the Iron Justice, trailing flames from her damaged stern and riddled with wounds, still charged toward the Norad II under cover from the Hyperion and her supporting fleet.
At that moment, the internal corridors and elevators of the Iron Justice’s docking bay were filled with rows of silver-gray power-armored marines running in formation.
Their armor markings had changed since Dominion times—now adorned with the emblem of an eagle and a wolf’s head, symbols that had come to represent these defectors.
Wearing similar power armor, Augustus advanced with Warfield, Tychus, and Kerrigan—who held her C-10 rifle close—through the passage leading out from the docking bay. The warning signs stenciled in white along the wall reminded Augustus that just beyond the airlock door ahead was the void of space.
Violent tremors rocked the deck beneath his feet. It felt to Augustus as if he were standing atop a boiling furnace.
Then, for a brief moment, everything stilled—
Followed immediately by a sudden surge in acceleration.
“Engage the gravity generators in your powered boots! Grab onto the walls, handrails—whatever you can!” Warfield’s voice thundered through the command channel.
“Brace for impact!”
Augustus seized a handrail with one hand, gripping Kerrigan’s hand tightly with the other.
A blinding flash—unseen by Augustus—erupted outside. He felt the jarring, grinding scream of metal on metal as the hulls collided, and the Iron Justice shook as if caught in a quake. He realized they were scraping alongside the Norad II’s portside hull, armor grating against armor like two massive, shrieking bars of soap.
“All units, get ready.”
As the Iron Justice finally came to a halt, Warfield fixed his eyes on the airlock door of the docking bay, now slowly opening.
“Let’s go, let’s go. I’ve been waiting for this,” Tychus said, chewing his cigar.
“Showtime.”
...
With a sharp hiss of high-pressure gas, the airlock doors slid open.
In that instant, it felt as if a thousand Gauss rifles and heavy machine guns fired at once. A hailstorm of needle-like rounds slammed against the powered armor of the frontline Marines, producing a clattering ping-pang-ping of impacts. Ricocheting bullets shattered the lighting fixtures in the docking bay, and once again, the flashes of Gauss fire carved streaks of flame through the dark.
The docking bay was cramped. Between the bulkheads, only a few fully armed Marines could stand shoulder to shoulder. In such tight quarters, a single electromagnetic grenade could reap devastating results.
In this boarding battle of the interstellar age, there was no room for tactics—or retreat. The two sides collided in brutal close combat in the vacuum of space, and every few meters of the battle line were marked by the corpses of fallen Marines. The walls were riddled with deep impact craters.
The silver-gray armored troops under Warfield and the bright-white Alpha Squad were firing at each other from just a few dozen meters apart. Electromagnetic pulses from grenades spread through the corridor like lightning serpents.
Both of these units were known for their relentless ferocity. Just like Alpha Squad’s commander, Edmund Duke, the 'Alpha Blood Hawks' were vicious and bloodthirsty. Whenever Alpha Squad entered a fight, they had a way of tearing a gap in the enemy's seemingly unbreakable defense lines—like a hawk ripping flesh from bone.
In just two short minutes, with Warfield’s forces launching wave after wave of assaults, over a hundred Marines had already died. As one man fell, another rushed in to take his place.
Alpha Squad maintained overwhelming suppressive fire throughout, holding firm control over the docking corridor.
The passage was a furnace of lead and fire, filled with a dense barrage of bullets—like a searing stream of molten metal. At that moment, Augustus was pressed against the wall beside the airlock, with Warfield standing right next to him.
After another failed attempt by Warfield to lead a charge—only to be beaten back by Alpha Squad’s heavy firepower—Augustus shouted into the comms, “Tychus, find a way to break open this damn docking bay!”
“Out of the way!” Tychus Findlay barked.
Towering and broad-shouldered, Tychus wasn’t just any soldier—he was a key enforcer for Marshal Augustus, leader of the Revolutionary Army. His powered armor had been custom-designed and reinforced for him. The red plating bore graffiti-style pinups of naked women from Turaxis II, Korhal IV, and Tarsonis, while his right shoulder proudly displayed the grinning hooded skull insignia of the Heaven’s Devils.
Tychus hurled his heavy machine gun to the ground with a loud clang, grabbed a massive new-generation synthetic resin shield from a nearby revolutionary soldier, along with several electromagnetic grenades, and charged straight into the docking corridor.
His powered boots pounded over spent rounds and fallen bodies as he roared forward—unstoppable, like a maglev train rocketing ahead at hundreds of kilometers per hour.
The Federal soldiers of Alpha Squad were visibly startled by Tychus’s terrifying momentum. They didn’t have time to fire their grenade launchers, but within seconds, their dense nail-round volleys had already shredded Tychus’s shield. His powered armor—freshly oiled and polished by Heaven’s Devils’ personal armorer Feek—was now covered in a web of gouges and scratches.
But Tychus’s armor plating was not like the standard issue. It was thicker, tougher, reinforced with an external layer of refined steel, and lined internally with shock-absorbent foam and segmented barriers. In short, his powered suit rivaled that of a Firebat’s exoskeleton—and could even tank a grenade or two.
The distance to the Norad II’s docking bay door was barely 20 meters. With just a few heavy strides, Tychus reached the entrance and hurled several electromagnetic grenades in rapid succession. Instantly, arcs of blue lightning burst through Alpha Squad’s defensive line.
Without slowing, Tychus used his battered shield to bash aside a soldier blocking his path, then tackled another to the ground like a tiger leaping into a herd of deer. The surrounding Alpha troopers hesitated to shoot, fearful of friendly fire.
“Follow me!” Warfield shouted, leading his men behind Tychus.
“Well done, Tychus,” Augustus followed closely behind Warfield, silently marveling—Tychus truly was a godsent brute of a man.
Warfield’s forces stormed the Norad II docking bay and swept through the remaining Alpha soldiers like autumn wind scattering fallen leaves. These troops weren’t the resocialized kind. Despite their officers yelling for them to hold the line, panic overtook them—and they fled.
“To catch up to me, Warfield, your boys need two more years of training,” Tychus said smugly, after seizing an enemy rifle and smashing in a helmet with the stock.
“My boys definitely aren’t at your level,” Warfield replied, offering Tychus a hand to pull him up.
“You’re easier to look at than any of your colleagues… at least for now,” Tychus said, reclaiming his Sweet Persuader heavy machine gun from a nearby Marine.
Between the docking bay and the lower deck, two more fleet corridors remained. But Alpha Squad had not set up defenses there. On orders from their commander, they were regrouping swiftly across the much larger lower deck and the hangar.
Taking the lower deck turned into another brutal battle. Nearly 500 fully armed Alpha troopers, Goliath assault mechs, and even Arclite tanks were assembled. The fighting was so fierce it nearly tore Norad II’s lower deck apart.
To prevent reinforcements from the rest of the Federal fleet from boarding through Norad II’s port, four of Warfield’s companies split off to seize the docking bays and hangars located on either side of the lower deck.
The remaining soldiers poured through the blasted-open hatches into Norad’s narrow internal corridors. Squad by squad, they advanced under the command of their officers toward the engine room, life support systems, and the main control center—home to a vast array of terminal computers and processors.
Meanwhile, Warfield and Augustus had long since led an assault team straight toward the bridge. Nearly thirty minutes had passed since the Iron Justice and Norad II had docked. Outside, the space battle still raged fiercely. Amid a chain of explosions, warships and fighters from both sides were either blown out of combat or left drifting helplessly in zero-G.
Tychus and Warfield led the charge, tearing through Alpha Squad’s lines one after another with unstoppable momentum—until they were finally stalled outside the bridge by a full company under Edmund Duke’s command.
Augustus was pinned down by a concentrated barrage from automated gun turrets and Gauss rifles. After leaving behind several corpses, he had no choice but to fall back.
Seizing the brief lull in Alpha Squad’s fire, Warfield once again led another group of soldiers in a frontal assault. But the intense firepower of the autocannons, grenades, and shoulder-mounted rockets shredded even the thick plating of powered armor.
Warfield was forced to retreat once more, the silver-gray plating of his command suit scarred with yet more bullet marks. As he prepared to push forward again, Augustus realized that Warfield would persist—advancing wave after wave until the enemy was broken. This was his style of war: relentless, disciplined, like a seasoned boxer wearing down his opponent.
