Humanity Endures

Part 13 - Epilogue | Chapter 8

Quenthal, his knees wallowing in a sea of tears of his own creation, cornered by the apathetic walls of his own quarters, and with any petty hopes left within him being stripped away by the cruel hand of reality, was, in no uncertain terms, a wreck — and understandably so. Once the Battle of Nahmatiix had been won, and after he had been forced to attend Xertaza's speech, his thoughts had immediately turned to the most pressing matter at hand — his family on Retharxia — whose world had been hit by alien invasion just as Lassarha's fleet was departing for Nahmatiix. As Xertaza's communications officer, Quenthal had been the man to order the ships of that world's defensive fleet to join Lassarha's armada, rather than defend their own planet; a short while later, and an alien attack had smashed through whatever force remained, dooming his family among countless others to death — the aliens had been able to do this partly because of his own actions. Quenthal was not just wracked by grief, for he was also wracked by guilt — guilt at having not spent more time with his loved ones before the invasion, before the wars, and guilt at having possibly ordered their demise. With them gone, he could never make up for his own failings, and it was that he regretted most of all. The quantum communicator he had left with his wife had ceased functioning long before Quenthal even arrived at Nahmatiix, being destroyed by alien corruption as it had overtaken the planet; now, Retharxia was nought but a blackened mass of alien biofluid, spewing forth legions of new alien ships for hours on end, long after it had swept away the armies of humanity below and the navies of the Empire above.

Over the past few hours, Quenthal had been communicating with the captains of every refugee ship from the world that he could get a hold of, asking them if their vessels had anyone aboard that was a part of his family; with these ships already being overwhelmed by such requests, and with their hulls being packed to the bursting point with huddled masses of poorly-organized refugees, this process was painfully slow, and all-too-often, inconclusive. Quenthal at times didn't know why he still searched — his wife's quantum communicator had been destroyed in a sea of alien corruption, thousands of miles from where the last refugee ships took off, while less than five percent of the planet's population had made it out alive. It was almost certain that his family was dead, and yet, perhaps out of necessity, he held out hope, contacting the captains of every Retharxian refugee ship, from repurposed super-freighter to commandeered cruise liner, as soon as the often-sluggish vessels exited the Remnant. Doubtless, across the waning human cosmos, billions of other hearts were being shattered as his was now; still, even if it was in vain, even if it went against sense, Quenthal, for the sake of his family and his own sanity, kept trying. That minute, two more refugee ships from Retharxia burst out into the Remnant, one nearby the world of Ihndrastar, the other above Kalithihar; Quenthal quickly dispatched messages to the ships via quantum communication, asking about his family and receiving the familiar response of "We'll look" from both. A mere minute later, the refugee ship above Kalithihar tested positive for an alien presence, and was wiped off the face of the galaxy; the stated response time for the craft over Ihndrastar was a hopeless two days.

Quenthal, exhausted, hopeless, shattered, succumbed to despair, and collapsed; his fine uniform quickly became soaked with his own ocean of tears, though the man himself was utterly oblivious to it. The aliens didn't care, the universe didn't care, no one else seemed to care, so why should he? Quenthal briefly put thought towards the gun in his holster, though he countered this by thinking that his family would have wanted him to stay strong and persevere; the mere thought of his family, however, only made Quenthal prey to another round of uncontrollable sobbing. The names and fleeting memories of his children, of his wife, tore through his mind as tears blinded his eyes; Quenthal had become oblivious to all that the galaxy held, and not a thing could rouse him.

As the textcomm faintly graced his implants, Quenthal barely paid it any heed, though as the message forced its way into his short-term memory, Quenthal, his eyes welling up with a fresh wave of tears, laughed. His weary heart, weighed down by the burdens of war and loss, suddenly became emancipated, and, struggling to his knees, Quenthal allowed the message to linger in his memory for just that blissful minute longer; a refugee center finally relayed to him the news he had thought impossible — his family still lived.