Humanity Endures

Part 11 - Nahmatiix | Chapter 1

"Peace is dreadful; it is boring; it softens the hearts and dulls the minds of a people — it is stagnant. I wish that it would end."

— Telzivax, "The Monstrous" Tekran, imperator. Spoken minutes before he ignited a galaxy-wide civil war that lasted five years.

***

The Present

The Sentinel soared through the war-gripped void around the world of Nahmatiix, its armored hull fully enshrouded by the shadow of its endless enemy, though its Loyalist crew was saturated with MECS, adrenaline, and patriotism to the point where it did not care. So great was the number of Traitors that their fleet blotted out the sight of Nahmatiix's star itself, but this was no issue to those aboard the Sentinel — they did not need light to fight and die. Through the sea of weaponized metal that was the Traitors' fleet, one could catch passing glimpses of Nahmatiix and its sister-worlds; barely visible was the Empire-Wide Communications Center, whose ability to impose propaganda and messages on the rest of the galaxy would doubtless prove crucial to reunifying the Empire, no matter which side won. As the EWCC's visage was eclipsed by an approaching wave of hundreds of thousands of Nahmatiixian warships, however, Barilen, the captain of the Sentinel, realized with a heavy heart that he would never live to see that day.

The hull of his ship shook with the force of firing a barrage of missiles and gauss rounds; the darkness produced by the impenetrable cloud of Traitor warships around him was immediately subsumed by the brilliant blaze of nuclear warheads tearing a Nahmatiixian storage depot to atoms. In response, tens of thousands of nearby Nahmatiixian warships moved to intercept, yet Barilen felt only the fleeting bursts of excitement that came with watching a grand plan coming to pass, and the chilling pangs of terror and dread that came with witnessing the approach of his own destruction — thankfully, MECS helped ease all of these, allowing pure focus to take their place. Barilen, his squadron, and the one hundred twenty seven similar ad-hoc clusters of vessels making similar attacks across the system, were not fearful. On all their minds was not the null probability of their own survival, nor the unnerving thought of fighting fellow humans while an alien menace prowled the stars, but instead how they would accomplish their singular purpose as best they could, before they themselves were killed. Witnessing the true scale of their foe would be a demoralizing experience, if the crew members aboard the Sentinel hadn't already resigned themselves to their deaths, knowing full-well that they were serving as a diversion that stood little chance of surviving for more than an hour. Somehow, it was this knowledge of their own demise which inspired them most.

Across every region of the already-embattled system of Nahmatiix, hundreds of thousands of Tehkrian vessels were descending on whatever Nahmatiixian habitations or space stations they could find, sparing those that surrendered so as to not discredit Lassarha, while annihilating everything else that they could in a sudden storm of nuclear fire. Barilen's force followed this example, seeking out new targets as it soared past the remains of the station it had most recently destroyed; Nahmatiixian warships began to swarm the Loyalist formation, immolating hundreds of vessels while the many thousands of defensive stations scattered around the system pulverized many hundreds more, though the Loyalist force, having accepted death, was no longer fazed by it. Diving on another Nahmatiixian station, this one a small industrial plant, the pro-Lassarha forces ripped the thing in two with a few select nuclear volleys before turning around in search of new prey, exchanging fire with their many pursuers as they themselves pursued a glorious death in service of humanity. With the Sentinel being forced to weave through a scattered formation of Nahmatiixian warships ahead of it, Barilen felt himself pushed into his harness as a nuclear detonation impacting the side of his frigate threatened to tear the vessel apart; a hurricane of sparks flew throughout the bridge, and the groan of strained metal was accompanied by the snap of bones and yelps of pain as the violent forces of battle took its toll on those fighting. A trio of additional nukes slammed into the starboard side of his vessel. Ducking, Barilen barely avoided a stray shard of metal that had become dislodged from a nearby wall, but as the fragment continued on its trajectory, it skewered Yesliana, Barilen's chief gunnery officer; groaning in agony that not even MECS could suppress, the woman fell limp into her harness a moment later, and there could be no doubt that she was dead. However, with nearly more MECS than blood coursing through his veins, the death of one of his closest friends failed to bring even a pang of guilt or sadness beyond a pained quivering of the heart. More on Barilen's mind was how her death would impact his ship's accuracy, but even this was not a great concern, for so long as his ship was in one piece, the war would continue.