Humanity Endures

Part 12 - Bravery and Bloodshed | Chapter 6

The sky of Nahmatiix, shaded a glorious myriad of colors in the wake of the nuclear war above, was nevertheless darkened not only by vast clouds of lingering dust and debris, but by the descent of the tens of thousands of Loyalist Strategic Deployment Pods; the flames of their arrival shone dimly through the shattered, dust-choked streets of the world below. Huddled crowds of grim-faced Nahmatiixers, clad haphazardly in hastily-grown suits of genetically-engineered armor worn over light civilian clothing, and wielding crudely manufactured, box-like railguns, watched with apprehension and a slight amount of fear as an entire army of Loyalist soldiers fell to the surface of their planet. Without MECS to calm their untested nerves, and considering the legendary status of Tehkrian soldiers, this fear was understandable and justified — they had been mobilized thinking of a glorious war to preserve their independence, but now all that many of them thought of was an impending slaughter on the surface of their own world as was occurring above it. Many of those militia still adored their leader, and despised their murderous enemy, while many of them were questioning him for the first time, but without a chance to withdraw, everyone there would have to fight and die for him regardless of what they felt.

Lying broken on the pulverized surface of the traitorous world, its gargantuan, landmass-sized hull somehow retaining the faintest semblance of the vessel's previous shape, the Harbinger's wreck occupied the center of a metallic crater that had once been home to Nahmatiix's government building, and the quarter of a million people who had worked there. Between mountains of broken metal, moderately-sized fires, a choking layer of dust and nearby skypiercers that threatened to collapse at any moment, Heralax's crater was in no way hospitable to human life — it was difficult to imagine, then, that the most important ground battle waged between humans for thousands of years was about to be waged in such a hellish place.

The Harbinger having been split in two, the vessel's metallic innards were scattered for kilometers in every direction; each of the two fragments of warship were now subject to an exodus, as their surviving crew members hastily disembarked from their ruined craft, wary of the Loyalist armies above. Thanks to the great clouds of smothering dust that had been kicked up by the warship's arrival, the titanic vessel's corpse was obscured to most, save those who had tracked the fallen vessel from orbit, and all of those Nahmatiixian forces who now rushed to assist their flagship's crew. Heralax Tekran, and an unknown number of surviving, mostly-enforcer bodyguards, doubtless lingered nearby one of these two fragments, hiding between the titanic, jagged mountain of metal which had come to replace much of the local cityscape itself — the imminent conflict was to be fought not just in the streets and plazas of Nahmatiix, but among the craggy ruins of Heralax's own flagship. The underground city beneath the battlefield, however, being absolutely pulverized by the impact of the Harbinger and other vessels before it, had been reduced and warped into an unnavigable mess of collapsed thoroughfares, debris-filled corridors, and raging fires, where floors merged with each other and entire areas threatened to collapse at any given moment. As a direct result of this, the Loyalists had a chance at victory: Heralax Tekran could not escape through the expansive under-city of Nahmatiix, nor would any vicious, numbers-demanding battles of attrition be fought for control of the subterranean theater. Armored vehicles, urban fighting, and bloody street-assaults would dominate the soon-to-be-battlefield, which effectively consisted of the Harbinger's crash site, and the broken city around it. The latter had to be taken to keep the millions of Traitor soldiers entrenched nearby the wreck at bay, and the former held the Prime Traitor himself — all of Lassarha's ground forces that had not been expended taking the EWCC were hurtling towards both of these locations, but only time and blood would tell if they would be able to secure either of them, or if they would be thrown back into orbit by their seemingly infinite foe.

On the streets, a few Traitor tanks, backed by squads of professional soldiers who were in turn supported by haphazardly equipped mobs of militia, collaboratively held defensive positions throughout the labyrinthine city — even though Nahmatiix's cityscape, inhabited by a flight-loving people, was designed without ground-transport, or tanks, in mind. Nevertheless, the Loyalist forces also brought with them tanks, and as much of the city had been levelled by the crash of the Harbinger, Lassarha suspected that these vehicles would find more use than they otherwise would, with this being to the immense benefit of the Loyalists, whose armored vehicles were indeed the envy of Nahmatiix's comparatively pitiful mechanized force.