Humanity Endures

Part 5 - War is Politics With Bloodshed | Chapter 5

Lassarha, for one, did not fear for her world's continued humanity — those few aliens that did survive and were currently fighting on the surface of her planet were hopelessly outnumbered, and were surrounded by the endlessly defendable cityscape of Tehkria, that was as much a fortress as it was an ecumenopolis. Her greatest uncertainty instead came from the aliens' ability to perfectly replicate humans that they killed — when any number of her own people could be aliens determined to undermine her planet, no adequate defence could ever be mounted again. Fearing this reality, Lassarha ordered the planet-wide adoption of measures intended to stop the spread of the alien corruption before she then turned to her other means of resolving this issue: Lassarha ordered Xalina, the scientist of her ship, to cease whatever project she was working on and instead create a more viable, more reliable means of detecting infiltrating aliens. The current scanner Lassarha and the rest of the fleet had received was both woefully inadequate — it, as experience had shown, only detected aliens with around a five percent rate of success — and it was uncomfortably expensive to produce; for the safety of her planet, and all the others in the galaxy, a better tool had to be designed, and quickly. It was now the end of the third day of the war with the aliens: if humanity did not adapt by the fourth, it could be extinct by the fifth.

Within hours of the battle's conclusion the last pockets of alien resistance on the surface of Tehkria had been annihilated, and Lassarha began to devote her time to readying her government, her planet, and her people for a more intense and deadly war — wars — than anyone could have ever anticipated. The popular saying, 'humanity endures' was already doubted by many people, including Lassarha, but now as the galaxy was being torn apart from within and without, by forces familiar and forces literally alien, the once-proud saying had become more of a cruel joke. The world of Earth was turning black under the influence of alien corruption, and the rest of the divided galaxy threatened to follow; on the minds of every military planner, and every soldier across the Empire, was the eternal question of crisis: what now?

***

Lekahn ducked; a beam of alien fire tore through the roof above and the wall beside him, slicing through the arm of a nearby soldier in the process. Their screams were silent against the blood-curdling roar of the aliens below, and their cries for help failed to penetrate above the whine of stretching metal, as the skypiercer he and his unit were occupying threatened collapse. Splayed out before Lekahn was a grisly array of corpses, mostly human, with a few alien limbs and torsos wading in a sea of mankind's blood — these were the solemn remnants of an incident but a dozen minutes ago, where a swarm of aliens had teleported into the floor Lekahn and what was left of his division, the 1708th, was defending. The result of this incursion had been utter slaughter; more than three-quarters of the surviving humans had been slain, and all of the aliens had perished, though there were always more of the latter.

The alien shrieking, as incessant as it was deafening, threatened to make Lekahn go insane — worse still, since his supply of MECS had long-since evaporated, focusing on the battlefield was becoming difficult amidst the tempest of emotions and the maelstrom of fear which tormented him at every turn. Breathing had long since become a near impossibility inside his claustrophobic, bloodied helmet, but at least, unlike many of his fellow soldiers, Lekahn still had the privilege of breathing at all. Beside him were two of his fellow soldiers, part of a remaining fifty in the 1708th Division that had once numbered thirty thousand; though one of the two soldiers had sustained a nearly-mortal wound from an alien projectile weapon, it only hastened the end for the unfortunate man, for, doubtless, anyone there who was still alive would eventually be butchered like the others. The other soldier of the pair was, like everyone else, almost out of ammunition, and entirely out of hope.

Quintets of alien 'harbingers' — winged, clawed, fleshy, fighter-sized alien barges that carried insignificant weaponry and very significant numbers of alien troops — glided past his disintegrating window, the alien flock screeching at the corruption-choked heavens while their yelping occupants, creatively dubbed 'riflers' by many amongst the soldiery because of their ranged weaponry, unleashed a torrent of gilded death on his position. The entire damned skypiercer threatened to come down as the main projectile cannon of an alien 'stomper' — a five-legged tank-like beast that covered anything it walked past in biofluid — was directed towards the base of his building, though at present, this building collapsing was the furthest away of Lekahn's problems; the only question on his mind was not if, but how he would die. The potent human artillery on his half of the planet was hopelessly busy trying to preserve the current, wavering front line, and direct air support had become all but impossible: with even the air being contaminated by alien corruption and capable of attacking things by itself, any human trying to fly would quickly find themselves forced into the nearest skypiercer by the very air they flew through. Underground, cut off from their tanks, artillery, and other saving graces, the human army was in almost full retreat, and even with these vehicles, the aliens above ground were, quite simply, endless; if there was an impossible situation, the defence of Earth had become it.