Humanity Endures

Part 12 - Bravery and Bloodshed | Chapter 7

Between the waist-deep ocean of blood that the weary combatants on the EWCC fought in, and the mountains of corpses that dominated each and every breach, each and every entranceway, that led into the bridge, there was scarcely an inch of the floor, or indeed of the walls, still visible to the unaided eye. Despite this, however, Felcamaxa and her forces fought, not for their lives — those were beyond saving — but to kill as many of their enemy as they could, for there was nothing else they could think of doing in such circumstances, even if everyone on that station was doomed to die anyway. With each second that passed, Felcamaxa and her fellow soldiers added to the grisly scenery. Having run out of ammunition for all of their weapons a while ago, her marines had resorted to taking the weapons off of the slain, be they enemies or friends; at the back of Felcamaxa's paper-thin lines lay a pile of looted weaponry where those with depleted reserves of ammunition could retire to temporarily so as to replenish their supplies. For those pinned by the Traitors' advance or too close to the combat to disengage, however, the only course of action left available was to ignite plasma bayonets, trust in one's own suit of armor, and hope for the best — as the air was filled with gunfire that could cut down a marine in seconds, this "best" never happened.

Grasping a pair of Plasma Swords in her two topmost arms, Felcamaxa, her armor ravaged and even destroyed in some places, her titanic body soaked in both her foes' blood and her own, cleaved through all who were foolish enough to get near her while the thunderous discharge of her lightning cannons periodically liquidated dozens of desperate Traitors, only to enter into a recharging state once again. Since she had slain the Traitor prime general in personal combat, there had been a remarkable scarcity of hostile enforcers, though most of Felcamaxa's own had perished long ago as well — this nevertheless meant that Felcamaxa was freer to fight than she normally would be. Marine armor was good, but it was intended only to protect against marine-carried firepower and explosives, and the marine underneath was still susceptible to blunt, brute force; enforcers remained a terrifying, deadly foe to any soldier, even if the battle had claimed most of them on both sides by this point.

Cutting through a trio of Nahmatiixian marines who had the audacity to charge her with plasma bayonets, Felcamaxa spied one section of her desperate defence that was wavering, and with one movement aimed and fired both of her twin lightning cannons. The resulting shot broiled five Nahmatiixers where they stood, though the Traitor attack as a whole remained unfazed, and it soon began to claim more ground; it looked as if Felcamaxa's defence had finally, and permanently, been broken. However, this Traitor success came too late — the sound that echoed throughout the chamber was not one of weapons firing, but instead, the whine of tearing metal, the cackle of detonating fuel-lines, and the panicked yells of those who were mortally close to the aforesaid carnage rang out, as the station finally began to come apart. A moment later, the unnerving wails of the dying station crescendoed into an explosive roar as the middle section of the EWCC detonated under the weight of the constant Nahmatiixian barrage, ripping the station in two, killing the hundreds of thousands of marines still fighting in that section, and immolating a few unfortunate Traitor warships that were too close to the blast in the process. As the two halves of the station drifted away from each other, the force of depressurization sending great swathes of metallic debris and marines hurtling into the void, the battles raging on the lower and upper half of the space station continued to intensify in spite of all that was happening. So great was the force of the detonation that the mountains of corpses that so characterized the bloodied battlefield were demolished, their constituent carcasses being thrown about the room in tornados of the dead that often picked up the living, in scenes as grotesque as they were disheartening; the oceans of blood beneath the combatants were often stirred up as well, and entire rooms quickly found themselves a new shade of gruesome.

Those who were engaged were often thrown across the room they were in, suffering wounds in the process, but, seemingly unable to stop fighting, the majority simply picked themselves up and proceeded to try and kill the nearest enemy they could find, even as blood and bodies rained down around them. Felcamaxa, her enforcer armor making her a lethal force in the air, ended up slamming into a wall and crushing a Traitor marine through pure chance, before both she and the puddle of gore that she had created then fell to the ground a few seconds later as their half of the station briefly stabilized. The roar of air leaving the station, the creaking of fracturing metal, and the hiss of gas accompanied the chaotic cacophony of the resuming battle; the Traitor fleet backed away slightly to preserve themselves from their own attack, before beginning their brutal assault anew. Felcamaxa's half of the station, already on the cusp of annihilation, would not survive for much longer, and all within were grimly aware of this fact. They no longer killed for life; they did so for the terrible sake of it. What else were doomed soldiers of both heroic and contrasting causes supposed to do to each other?