Humanity Endures

Part 7 - Last Stand | Chapter 7

This mentality abruptly faded when, plummeting from the heavens and exchanging the chaotic cacophony of battle for the harsh squeal of grinding metal and the whine of poorly-maintained magnetic rails, the space elevator, a five-story building-like rectangular construct with walls of armored glass, came to a decisive halt at the chaotic battlefield. The enforcer who had repaired it stood proudly atop their accomplishment, though the area around it was scarcely under human control, nor did it provide cover; a few moments later this very enforcer was felled by a hail of alien projectiles. Within the space elevator was an assortment of various immolated alien and human corpses, all remnants of a past battle; Velan, surrounded, feared that even though the elevator had arrived, he would soon end up like those corpses.

In an effort to wrest control of their future, Korthekar and whatever forces he had left mounted a last-ditch assault on the failing fortifications around the space elevator, abandoning the harbingers above to do as they pleased while they secured the device. Their weaponry burning through munitions like a politician through excuses, the enforcers succeeded in driving back the alien scourge from the immediate area around the space elevator, though the trenches and area just beyond that remained thoroughly embattled. Many human groups, though the elevator had arrived, were still surrounded on all sides by alien horrors; for every moment that passed, the battle became even more of a massacre, with it being left to each soldier to figure out how they were going to escape. Velan and Iselviah, collaboratively agreeing on an innovative solution and rallying the crew members that were nearby them, used a combination of gravity nullifiers and PFS to soar effortlessly above the heads of their foes, and though a few of their crew members were cut down by ranged fire in the process, the majority survived intact, thanks to the focus of the aliens being on their ground-bound victims. Indeed, many aliens that had clear shots at Velan and his crew simply ignored them, not even firing their weapons, as they watched groups of humans flee. Yelazar, Illtera, and Xandra broke through to the space elevator the conventional way, with blood, tenacity, and sheer luck; Falmenec and Ralthina hastily changed a few rifles into explosives whilst the battle was raging around them, and used these to spectacularly blow their way out of their predicament, all while the group Dentor was leading broke out in a manner similar to that of Yelazar and Illtera, though his successful attempt encountered much less resistance than the others. Arriving at the space elevator, these survivors held the line and entrenched themselves within and around the device whilst they bought time for more survivors to make their way to the elevator; as the battle had turned into a massacre a few minutes ago, however, these survivors were not plentiful. Keeping the hordes of fiends repeatedly assailing their position at bay, the defenders were soon forced to take cover, as the space elevator was strafed by the harbingers which Korthekar had been forced to leave alone; nevertheless, as the weaponry on harbingers was weak, and as the space elevator was armored to withstand assault, this bombardment was ineffectual. Indeed, the display seemed almost for show.

The entire hall was rocked with explosions as many of those remaining humans sought to keep the aliens occupied with incendiary means, or sought to find an end in a way that ensured the aliens could not exploit their body for resources. Sadly, the intentions of these explosions skewed towards the latter motive; when added to the lethal course of the battle, this ensured that the human survivors were in the mere hundreds.

Velan, whose only cover was a piece of metal and some scaffolding, was at unimaginable risk; Harbingers fired on him and his compatriots form above, raining biofluid and entire alien beasts on the combatants below. Alien riflers reduced overconfident human soldiers to slag in the blink of an eye — if their "eyes" could indeed blink — and a limitless horde of alien abominations swarmed before Velan, rapidly mopping up any stragglers that remained, before they turned their attention on the rest of the human force. With each passing moment, even more people were butchered, and as the space elevator reached its first full minute of lingering on the surface, the number of remaining, trapped humans, and the chances that those humans would escape their encirclement, plummeted simultaneously. Cursing circumstance, fate, and the universe itself, Velan slammed his fist into a nearby wall in desperate anger, before he ordered everyone into the space elevator, commanding that this elevator would return to space within the next forty seconds, even if not everyone had reached it. In war, one cannot save everyone, and if Velan wanted to keep any of his crew members alive, he had to leave some of them behind; for the sake of those who still lived, he couldn't stay behind with them himself, for symbolic gestures that got people killed were a sign of stupidity, not heroism.