Humanity Endures

Part 6 - The Cesspit | Chapter 6

With their movement being bolstered by genetic modification, mechanical improvement, the very armor they wore, and their good spirits, Velan's force, chanting patriotically all the way, arrived at the constabulary office within half an hour. Unnervingly, besides other Nemesis crew members, Velan's retinue didn't sight a single living human during the entire trek; besides than the low hum of faraway nuclear detonations, the entire city was possessed of an eerie silence only broken by the song and chatter of the eager humans. Wherever there was an exposed wall, one could see defeatist graffiti hastily applied, though much of this was submerged in a sea of radioactive dust, or painted over with blood. Velan's overactive sixth sense warned him that he was being watched, yet none of his sentries confirmed his suspicion. The dust-choked city was continually illuminated by the flashes of firestorms and atomic bombardment in the distance, which had finally restarted, though despite the alien corruption nearby, Velan's region of the planet had been entirely spared by the Kalithiharian navy; why this was the case, Velan couldn't say, but he suspected it had to do with why he had been summoned to the system in the first place.

Over the course of the trek, Velan received several reports of critical success by his bike-borne recruiters, and, according to them, over two thousand Kalithiharians had been mustered and were making their way to the constabulary office, their quantum communicators being quickly repurposed at the same time; furthermore, Falmenec had been recovered, alive, and completely unharmed. Some of those who had crashed nearby Velan's initial landing site simply located the main human force and rejoined it themselves; these were welcomed with open arms. Once Velan and his force had finally arrived at the rendezvous point, the already impressive number of rallied Kalithiharians continued to grow to the point where it had doubled, expanding to include nearly every single Kalithiharian that had landed near Velan's own crew. Even Velan, an occasional optimist, had not expected this outcome; according to reports from some of the messengers Velan had dispatched, Terxah had been instrumental in this success, as many Kalithiharians treated her with notable respect, and in a few cases, even reverence. Velan found this curious, but with an alien invasion raging and with him being trapped on an alien-occupied world, he had more urgent issues to ponder as he walked.

Arriving at the desolate part-plaza, part-garden, adjacent to which his destination was located, Velan paused a moment; he did this to appreciate the scenery, and to decide whether he would parade his eager crew around the square to raise spirits further. Another second, and he decided against the latter and ceased the former to save time. A moment later, he sent Korthekar and a few marines to scout out the rendezvous structure for potential threats — and spoils — before bringing the rest of his crew members to the base of a nearby building to rest. Once his advance force declared the rendezvous building safe — and not entirely lacking in spoils — Velan allowed his crew members to disperse, ransack, and, as a precaution, fortify the place in anticipation of all the reinforcements that had landed in the surrounding city.

Velan then turned his attention to what was to be his home for the next few minutes. The constabulary office — what remained of it, at least — was a modest structure: standing fifty storeys tall, with a medium-sized, though empty hangar bay for police vehicles, and with reasonable accommodations for the constables themselves, it served its purpose adequately. More important than this, however, was the fact that the building itself was as well armored as a frigate, and was also reasonably well-armed — in terms of defences, it was difficult to do better, given the circumstances. Though the building's armory had mostly been plundered by fleeing civilians or even retreating constables, the place's stationary turrets — capable of going toe-to-toe with even something as heavy as a tank — remained fully intact. These turrets mostly overlooked the somewhat picturesque square before the building, a square that was an impressive square kilometer in size, and was likely once home to an aesthetically pleasing garden of some variety; in the wake of nearby nuclear detonations and dusty firestorms, however, this fertile ground, which had once held plants and ornamentation, was now scorched, covered in ash, and utterly barren. Almost out of view, a patch of ground that led to the subterranean portions of the Cesspit was thoroughly stained with dried blood, and littering the general area was a total of nearly forty human corpses, all of them bearing gauss fire wounds. Velan, not wanting to damage the morale of his crew or himself, immediately averted his gaze from the sight of the massacre and swore never to mention it. Even without this, however, the destruction of the square was near-total: even if, somehow, the aliens on the planet were eradicated in their entirety, and the biofluid destroyed down to its last unholy drop, Velan did not know how much of the Cesspit would be usable after the fact.