Humanity Endures

Part 6 - The Cesspit | Chapter 7

In the time since Velan had arrived at the now-abandoned constabulary office, the alien hellscape had expanded in size, and was now a mere half-kilometer from Velan's current position; beyond that lay a seemingly infinite expanse of cityscape, swamped by alien biofluid and defiled by alien taint. After progressing through ten kilometers of this, Velan and his makeshift army would reach the miraculously untainted military base, which was host to the space elevator, that in turn led to a station, where there could be a ship. Everyone was aware that the plan was unimaginably risky, and indeed not likely to succeed, but as it was their only hope for survival, none complained.

Nevertheless, with the Kalithiharians' extensive cybernetic improvement, and his own crew's rampant genetic modification, Velan's entire formation could traverse the ten kilometers of alien corruption with great speed; if they were attacked whilst traversing this infernal place, however, whether they would reach the military garrison at all would be thrust into doubt. Swiftness and luck were the crutches upon which Velan's plan rested, and that fact was not lost on anyone as the mixed formation advanced; silence, aside from the thunderous clatter of armored footsteps against metal, ensured. All patriotic singing had ceased, and such was the tension that there was barely even whispered conversation. These human soldiers were professionals dead-set on staying alive; under normal circumstances, nothing could have stopped them, though on the Cesspit, things were impossibly far from normal.

Korthekar, most senior officers, and whatever marines and enforcers the human army had managed to scrape together led the vanguard, with everyone else taking up the middle of the formation in no particular order save that a few of the Kalithiharian captains and Yelazar took up positions there to ensure order. The tail end of the formation was home to the wounded and the weak, most of whom were occupied with carrying the various equipment of all the ships, and the supplies which had been looted from the surface; these people were stationed at the tail end of the force so that if the force was attacked, and the situation was truly hopeless, the slower wounded could be abandoned without getting in the way of the rest of the formation. This fact, perhaps unsurprisingly, made the rear of the column the least joyous part of this makeshift army. The only people there of any note being Ralthina and Falmenec; most, including Ralthina, were resigned to death already, though Falmenec's optimism had somehow survived where that of hundreds of other people had not. As the force marched, inevitably, despite all that had happened, and despite the fact that they drew nearer to the aliens' domain with every single step, some conversations began; Ralthina and Falmenec began to talk advanced economics and business theory, Korthekar cordially growled at the Kalithiharian enforcers who accompanied him, and Velan even struck up a discussion with Iselviah, the highest-ranking Kalithiharian among them, and someone who had attracted his interest earlier. These normal-seeming discussions transpired even as the formation proceeded past mounds of shredded human corpses, for the soldiers talking would do or ignore anything just to have a scrap of their old lives back — to bring some shred of joy into the hell that could kill them. Though many wished for relief, however, many inevitably talked of sorrow and loss; Velan and Iselviah's conversation soon broached their lost ships and dead crew members, while others spoke of their families, whether they were endangered, or already gone. Tears were shed. A few more minutes, and all of these pleasant conversations soon came to a bitter end: it didn't take long for the human host to reach the insidious, slowly advancing border of the alien corruption, beyond which was a festering hellscape that defied imagination. Past even this lay the humans' single forlorn chance at continued life — a chance that they would pursue no matter the cost, for that was human nature.

The surface of the old city having been subsumed by a sea of formless, alien biofluid, there was scarcely a remnant of anything human visible; even the skypiercers had been transformed into writhing, living spires of alien biology, though in the shadowy distance, behind the monstrous landscape and the tainted sky above, the towering form of the pyramid-like military complex loomed — uncorrupted, and relatively intact. The complex's space elevator itself, its microbial shield glinting in whatever light penetrated the tenebrous heavens, shot up into the void beyond with ease; the sight of their only hope, surrounded by so much of their foe, filled the observing humans' hearts with more dread than it did hope. The alien scourge seemed as if it could spill out onto the surface of the Cesspit at any moment, consuming those hapless fools who tread on it; instead the roar of the churning, shifting biofluid ocean could be heard, and the sea of alien taint regularly rose and fell as an alien intelligence seemingly pumped the alien material into the depths of the artificial human world instead. Here, the aliens could rapidly corrupt the world's core, where their terrible gains, shielded by the surface, would not be subject to nuclear intervention. This, and this alone, kept Velan alive, for if the surface had been lost, so too would he have been.