Humanity Endures

Part 12 - Bravery and Bloodshed | Chapter 9

The bridge of the Steadfast shook as the armor of the vessel began to buckle under the unremitting nuclear onslaught which had beset the warship for hours — though the situation on the surface of Nahmatiix remained a stalemate, the chaotic state of desperate warfare between the battered Loyalist fleet and the seemingly unending armada of Traitor warships was anything but stable. As the battle had dragged on, Lassarha's armada had inflicted devastating losses upon their Nahmatiixian foe, but, critically, their Nahmatiixian foe had done the same to them. Though millions more Traitor vessels had been destroyed than Loyalist ones had been lost, the Loyalists remained significantly outnumbered, and the Traitors had even begun to receive fresh reinforcements from the Remnant; over time, Lassarha's situation had become more strained, and with each passing minute she lost more vessels and territory within the Nahmatiix system. At this rate, it was unlikely that the battle would last for another half hour.

In spite of this looming defeat, the Loyalist forces fought as ferociously as ever; so vicious was the battle that the wrecks of destroyed vessels were approaching the number of warships still fighting. As these wrecks lost power and their gravity nullifiers failed, most planets had been beset by a rain of destroyed warships, both friendly and hostile; many Nahmatiixian ships and defensive stations had been forced to divert their fire from living Loyalist warships, to dead ones, to prevent these lethal hulks from pulverizing their planets. Nevertheless, the battle had raged for some time, and there were simply too many destroyed vessels to shoot down. Some of disabled warships inevitably got through the Traitor defences; their impacts on the Traitor worlds were catastrophic, had been deadly to thousands, and had plunged nearly every planet and moon in the system into nuclear winters of varying severity.

Despite the damage inflicted on them by the war, however, the populaces of these worlds remained loyal to Heralax — loyal enough that billions of them still took to the skies in their own ships to do battle with the Loyalist navy. These supported the already vast number of Traitor warships, and against such overwhelming, determined numbers, the Loyalists were at their wits' end. Having favored sacrificing ships over losing territory throughout the course of the battle, the Loyalist fleet was becoming thinly spread, and its reserves depleted, at an alarming rate.

Any brilliant tactics or strategies that the Loyalists employed were merely moves that bought brief respite, a few million dead Traitors, and nothing else. Victory in space was impossible to achieve, with the only prize Terilan could hope to attain being the prolonging of his fleet's survival; the situation continued to deteriorate, and a luck-starved Terilan with a rapidly weakening fleet could do little more than try to keep his ships alive and wait for results to be achieved on the surface of the traitorous planet he was blockading. Nothing more than the assurance of another minute's survival could be 'won' in space — the Loyalist fleet was too depleted, and their foe too vast, for him to mount any decisive counterattacks or to truly capitalize on any clever tactics or breakthroughs. Terilan had done his best to win the battle for Lassarha, and he had failed; now, the fate of the human galaxy lay in the hands of Osilarzan and the other Loyalists fighting on the surface of the Traitors' capital world. Forces that had been raised to battle the alien scourge now slaughtered each other on the streets of a human world; the outcome of all this bloodshed would become soon apparent, depending on the actions of those who created it, though the state it left humanity in, no matter which side won, was questionable.

***

Theten's ship, being followed by what remained of its accompanying squadron, weaved through the maze of ravaged skypiercers that dominated the devastated cityscape of Nahmatiix, flying impossibly close to the ground in order to evade the anti-aircraft fire that made the skies as unsafe as the streets. However, as Nahmatiix was a world built by and for a people of pilots, flying one's fighter through the city which had been designed for such an exploit was not a difficult task, even if the soldiers on the surface shot at oneself constantly. Thanks in part to those very same soldiers who had downed Leselah's fighter, and set in motion a surprisingly beneficial chain of events, Theten now knew the exact location of Heralax Tekran's destination, though he did not, as of yet, have a plan to neutralize it.