Humanity Endures

Part 7 - Last Stand | Chapter 4

The cacophony of shrieks around Falmenec was mere background noise; even when the battery of tank-sized turrets which lined the reinforced hallway fired in near-unison, the explosive action sending reverberating blasts of sound echoing through the beleaguered halls of the complex and nearly deafening those nearby, he was dispassionate. Rather, it was the bone-chilling sound of alien limbs scraping against his exterior wall, or the continuous trill of overcharged alien projectile weapons as these assailants attempted to gain entry into the complex from above, that caused even the MECS-addled man to shudder with terror.

Falmenec had never been a fighter; he had only joined the military and its science division because of the various professional perks provided by the posting, and because he knew many colleagues who had done the same — not because he was willing, or for that matter, able, to pick up a coilgun in defence of humanity. Clutching his rifle in terror as he waited for the aliens to achieve a breach in the outer wall, Falmenec subconsciously pressed the gun's stock against himself with such force that it would have damaged his shoulder, were this shoulder not encased in armor. The violent crashing of a harbinger against a wall next to him nearly sent an on-edge Falmenec jumping into the air; the firing of a nearby anti-infantry turret, which was targeting the main alien horde swarming the courtyard, reminded him again of his duties to fight, and he hit himself with another round of MECS in that moment.

As the aliens below had begun scaling the walls of the complex, their efforts only impeded by gauss fire and the occasional turret, the safety of those very same turrets had been placed into question. Swarms of alien harbingers, uttering guttural battle cries — or hunting calls — with bloodthirsty intensity that only aliens could muster, descended on the human-occupied complex by the thousands, without fear for their own lives; with many of them surviving to unload their howling occupants onto the fortifications below, the complex's turrets seemed on the brink of being overrun. Worse still, as these turrets regularly thinned the crowd of aliens below — and, more importantly, reduced the scale of the ocean of biofluid through which the alien assaults derived their true unstoppable momentum — if they were to fall, the human defence would likely follow soon after. Shooting a glance over to those beside him: Dentor, his purple hair just barely visible through the mostly opaque visor of his helmet; Ralthina, who handled and inspected her rifle with surprising grace; about ten other sailors of both Kalithiharian and Nemesis backgrounds; Falmenec felt a pang of doubt, as he questioned the ability of his non-marine compatriots against such an overwhelming alien force, with barely any support. The weight of this distrust only compounded Falmenec's great fear, stemming from his lack of belief in himself. He and his forlorn non-combat crew now stood against the greatest enemy humanity had ever faced — what chance could they have? Another instant, and with a mournful metallic whimper, a section of the complex's armor announced its own imminent collapse; the clamor of battle below him suddenly grew all the louder, and Falmenec knew that the aliens had breached into his area. Calling upon those around him to advance on the source of this intrusion, Falmenec felt like he had been condemned to near-certain death; somehow, this did nothing but make him want to fight even more fiercely.

***

Dentor, equipped with nought but a rifle, armor, and a host of explosives, received Falmenec's call to action, and immediately responded; everyone else nearby followed almost immediately after him, acting with heroic alacrity in spite of the deathly risk facing them. With his suit circulating clean air throughout his system, Dentor couldn't smell the doubtless pungent scents of the death-filled battlefield, but when he thought of those he fought alongside, he could smell their terrible fear — it was remarkable that despite the terror the reserve force felt, everyone fought as bravely as they did.

The site of the aliens' breach was nearby — only a few dozen meters away from him, in fact — yet, Dentor advanced fearlessly all the same; when his squad rounded a corner and was confronted with a sneering wall of malevolent blackness, he did not so much as flinch. While others fumbled, Dentor reacted quickly, and simply emptied his rifle's sizeable magazine into the creatures before they could empty his body of its guts; those around him finally did the same, and the limited alien presence could not withstand such an assault. The threat being thoroughly dead, the Dentor's squad barely stopped to breathe before they pressed on; a few more moments of travel through monochrome corridors, made colorful by blood-stains, and the group stumbled upon a similarly-sized group of aliens that was uncharacteristically idling near the breach they had created. The human force did not waste any time before filling the room with gauss fire, and Dentor, grabbing one of the many powerful explosives he possessed, hurled the device into the occupied room; for a moment the entire corridor seemed to be enveloped in the light of a star, and was shaken as if the metallic earth far beneath it was coming apart, as the aliens' foothold was consumed by a storm of explosive fire. The next moment, the tactical encounter was thoroughly resolved, though the until-then still functional turret the aliens had attacked was also thoroughly destroyed, the mauled corpse of its previous human occupant now immolated and reduced to ash. Dentor had killed the aliens, but he had also sabotaged the turret; Falmenec and Ralthina both shot him glances which asked, "Did you really need to do that?!" and Dentor replied by miming an apology, though this did not change how he felt about his action — a core tenant of his bloodthirsty heart was that in such a war, there could be no such thing as overkill. A few of the sailors accompanying them quickly rushed over to the breach in the complex's wall, two of them filling the gap with a crude replacement stored nearby, while a third, along with the rest of the squad, provided covering fire. Their work was quickly completed, and there was a brief lull in activity as the defenders, some of them panting for breath, awkwardly glanced at each other, unsure about what to do next.