Humanity Endures

Part 12 - Bravery and Bloodshed | Chapter 5

At the core of the battle, however, is where many of these ships, almost all of which were more intact than the Ruthless, flourished; Tehkria-classes, employing nuclear armaments equal to those of dozens of lesser craft, tore at each other with ferocity matched only by the aliens, though against armor of such quality and scale, even this ferocity did not achieve results quickly. Frigates weaved throughout the carnage, ramming any fighter craft before them into pieces regardless of whether or not they were friendly, as they sought to support their larger allies; these warships were routinely and viciously targeted by the all-encompassing bombardment of nearby Tehkria-classes, but being piloted expertly, these craft were able to evade almost all of the munitions sent their way, despite the limited room to maneuver. Many Nahmatiixian fighters were shredded by invisible bursts of laser fire or were ripped apart by hyper-precise torrents of gauss projectiles, these being issued forth from any of the tens of thousands of raiders that the Loyalist force relied on to screen them from, and otherwise counter, the swarms of Traitor fighter craft — the Loyalists' own fighters were, of course, woefully insufficient for the trying task. Still, despite their being individually outmatched by every ship class there, the endless swarms of fighters, weaving through the carnage with the grace of water, did not relent. Raiders, frigates, and cruisers were all gutted and torn to pieces by the people of Nahmatiix, who threatened to turn the tide of the engagement by themselves, and yet again proved their worth as a martial people. The Traitors' raider-class ships, without fighters to engage, instead hunted their Loyalist counterparts or screened missiles for larger ships, with mixed success. The battle between humanity's finest had, so far, mirrored the bloody stalemate that existed throughout the rest of the system; it was difficult to imagine that despite the heroic efforts of so many, so little had been accomplished.

Tehkria-classes, humanity's passion for war made manifest, circled and tore at each other in unspeakably impressive clashes of ordinance and willpower; frigates and cruisers either served to support their allied craft or engaged each other in contests of maneuver, and swarms of Traitor fighters ravaged anything larger than them while surviving the endless Loyalist reprisal fire, but for each second of the battle that passed, Heralax, aboard his greatly-weakened flagship, drew further away from Lassarha's force. This problem grew graver with each passing instant; maintaining her current action was not feasible, and Lassarha saw but one way to remove the Nahmatiixian blockade before her. Dispatching orders to a sweat-stained Yezalax, Lassarha felt the entire Ineffable shift as the craft's engines reached FSA in moments; a few seconds of hard burn, and the craft, along with a nearly-nonexistent escort, now hung just above the battle between Heralax's blockade and Lassarha's force. Around it buzzed a light swarm of Traitor fighter craft that were about as consequential as dust would be to an enforcer, and approaching it was a number of massive Traitor battlegroups, though none of these were nearby enough to interrupt Lassarha's next action.

The Harbinger, though it was some distance away and behind a few thin layers of ships, lay within the sights of the Ineffable; with its antimatter cannons being only one volley away from depletion, Lassarha wasted no time in ordering the weapons used — if Heralax wanted to reach the surface of his world quickly, Lassarha would help him.

With a series of four thunderous shots that reverberated throughout the hull and half-deafened all of those in the bridge, the Ineffable dispatched its antimatter warheads towards their target at incredible speed; the first of the warheads detonated prematurely, so as to clear a number of Traitor vessels that stood in the way of those behind it; the second found itself embedded in a Traitor cruiser, which it promptly reduced to ash in a detonation which grew to claim hundreds of other Traitor warships. The last two warheads, however, being both expertly-aimed and inordinately fortunate, reached the Harbinger mere instants later; with their horrifying destructive potential being fully unleashed upon the already battered flagship, the Harbinger became engulfed in a sphere of solid white flame, which soon subsided to reveal that the craft had been ripped in half and thoroughly cauterized, with all life, turrets, armor, thrusters, and shielding utterly purged from the surface of the vessel. As a shockwave spread across the Harbinger's crumbling hull, both smouldering halves of the craft began to plummet like flaming, building-sized anvils to the surface below, vast shards of metal shearing off their misshapen forms, while the artificial atmosphere of Nahmatiix tore at what remained of the already wrecked vessel's hull. Under the rain of steel, dozens of skypiercers and any who may have been inside them were brutally compacted; smaller chunks of ship, or even the crippled hulks of escort vessels that had been pulled towards the planet by the relentless force of gravity, were skewered on the pointed tips of elegant skypiercers or lodged into their sides. Some violently crashing ships even destroyed these structures entirely, killing any who were foolish enough to remain within the tall buildings during a raging battle. As the Harbinger hurtled towards the fearful ground below, many of these skewered ships were dislodged from their temporary resting places and began falling once more, either being impaled again, or following the Harbinger to the most unlikely, yet arguably most deserved, of destinations — the Nahmatiixian planetary government building itself. Heralax's center of government was mere moments away from being destroyed by his own flagship.