Humanity Endures

Part 11 - Nahmatiix | Chapter 6

As the battle for Nahmatiix raged, as tens of thousands of ships were violently riven into pieces and millions of people were slaughtered with every passing minute, Terilan, and his ship's bridge that had been directing the battle, remained almost perfectly still; the intense vibrations of the ship's walls as they struggled to withstand countless nuclear and gauss impacts did nothing to unsettle its valorous inhabitants. Glancing at the sight, one would not think that the Steadfast was in a battle for its life against a quarter of a million Traitor vessels, but as the warship sat just behind the tempestuous front lines, weathering volleys and barrages like any other, it personally returned the fire it had sustained and laid hundreds of hostile craft to waste in the process. Guilt weighed on the minds of the living, but it did little to quench the inferno of battle, an inferno fuelled by desperation, hope, and the looming alien threat that served as the backdrop for the colossal engagement. It occurred to Terilan that the aliens were likely not remaining idle with so many of humanity's warships in one place, though he immediately stopped thinking about that reality: such musings would only distract and unnerve him, which in turn could cost thousands of Loyalist lives. Merely keeping the Steadfast alive would occupy the full attention of a lesser man, and doing the same while also managing a fleet of tens of millions would be nigh-impossible for anyone else, even among those on the Military Council — but not Terilan. Though they were outnumbered and on the verge of being overwhelmed, under Terilan's guidance, the Loyalist fleet forced Heralax's forces to pay for every destroyed ship with two of their own, and had claimed vast regions of system. From the edge of Nahmatiix's scarlet sun, to the wreck-choked skies of Vxiiania, one of Nahmatiix's sister-worlds, to the vast network of manufacturing complexes that lay just beyond the planet of Nahmatiix itself, the battle for control of the human galaxy raged, and it did so bloodily. Billions gave their lives in the hopes of a better future for the living; their sacrifices countered each other, and the war continued to rage.

Despite the Loyalists' great efforts, however, if the current status quo were to be maintained, their fleet would be entirely unable to survive for even a few more hours, let alone kill Heralax Tekran, and end the war; attrition had taken its toll. A breakthrough, pushing aside the most elite, most determined forces in Heralax's entire fleet, would be required to even sight the Nahmatiixian imperator; to kill him would require nothing short of a miracle, and nothing less than the sacrifice of hundreds of millions of sailors. However, as the brutal battle continued on for another twenty minutes, with neither side making progress and both sides taking great losses in the process, this miracle continued to prove elusive for the Loyalist side.

As Terilan continued to micromanage the fleet, and to a much lesser extent, his ship, he reviewed the positions and statuses of every single battlegroup at play; with tidal waves of tactical data running through his acute tactical mind, Terilan suddenly became aware of a nigh-imperceptible weakness in the Nahmatiixian force, and then calculated how best to exploit it. If executed correctly, his maneuver stood a chance of breaking the Traitor lines across the center of the battle, and in doing so, it could shatter the stalemate. Carefully constructing his orders and preparing to dispatch them across his entire fleet, Terilan's great concentration was abruptly shredded by an unstoppable tide of information that his implants could not shut out; the onset of the mental assault was so sudden, so forceful, and so endless that it sent Terilan and everyone on his bridge reeling in the wake of the cognitive assault. Many crumpled in their chairs as they struggled to so much as think, while others exclaimed futile roars of defiance at their assailants as they attempted to weather the storm of data — no matter how vigorous their resistance, it was universally futile. His mind split by an unquenchable headache, his legs involuntarily trembling, and his implants quickly overheating as they struggled to process or stem the endless tide of "priority" information, Terilan, accustomed to having tactical data pour through him, was now buffeted by an unending stream of Traitor propaganda. Fighting through the endless information and attempting to block it from his mind, Terilan realized that the stream of repeated messages could not be stemmed, as it originated from the third backup of the Empire-wide Communications Center — a device purpose-built to, during emergencies, impose crucial messages on people regardless of whether or not they wanted to hear them, and a device that could only be rendered silent by rendering it destroyed or captured. With the EWCC far away from the front line, and with its armor having been significantly added to since the beginning of the civil war, it would take an unreasonable amount of time to destroy. Even though the EWCC was not guarded by many warships, with a crippling flow of information pulverizing the minds of everyone in the Loyalist fleet, it was difficult to even think about trying to destroy the station, with actually doing so being as forlorn a hope as thinking it possible to kill Heralax Tekran in the opening phases of the battle.

To halt the debilitating flow of messages, one could disable one's communications implants, but doing so would render Terilan's fleet without the ability to organize or coordinate even within individual ships, and it would become as incapable of fighting as it was at present. The station far from the front lines and relatively unguarded, would be easily reachable under normal circumstances, but with his entire fleet crippled, it might as well have been resting comfortably on the surface of Nahmatiix itself. Struggling to surpass the unending waves of data, Terilan continued to command his ship as best he could, but with tasks that had previously been as easy or natural as breathing suddenly requiring great, conscious effort to accomplish, the degree to which he could even manage his own bridge became limited; even those he issued orders to could scarcely carry them out, for their own minds were being overrun with worthless information just as Terilan's was. As the minds and subsequently bodies of Loyalists across the fleet were crippled by the Traitors' torpefying usage of the Empire-wide Communications Center, the Traitor armada quickly found purchase and success where it had previously found nothing but death, and the entire Loyalist fleet slowly began to implode, helpless in the face of both the assault on their minds, and the assault on their ships.

***

"Humankind has had a love of bloodshed since its inception; why did we ever think this passion would cease to exist after it was united into a single state?"

— Kaelarhiax Tekran, the fifth Imperator, spoken during the commencement of the Empire's first civil war.