Humanity Endures

Part 3 - Light's End | Chapter 4

That instant, the marine captain through whose eyes Velan had been watching the boarding action unfold was suddenly catapulted into the alien vessel by the inner machinery of their SDP, and, after a brief delay, Velan saw the interior of the alien warship; an interior that, unlike the exterior of the deadly vessels, was deceptively familiar. The alien ships appeared to have an analogue to corridors, which were extremely large compared to their human counterparts — they were roughly five meters wide and seven tall, though aside from this, they, surprisingly, were not too dissimilar from those on human craft. Nonetheless, these corridors' corners were oppressively slanted inwards, and they had a curved, uneven, ceiling that unnerved any who looked at it; the aliens' vessels were anything but homey. The strangest — and most alarming — aspect of the seemingly benign hallways was that their floor was entirely submerged in a sticky, viscous fluid, one that was so omnipresent that it went up to the shins of the exploring marines, while it actively clung to the legs of those who trod on it like industrial glue. The alien liquid was blacker than the void of space — for even space is illuminated by stars — and the pitch-black walls, though intensely reflective of the light produced by the boarding marines' helmets, were similar in their malevolent hue.

Stranger still, as Velan watched the marines progress, he — and Falmenec, who exclaimed his discovery audibly so that his words reached those nearby — noticed that there were no clear controls or unique features despite all the interior space thus scouted within the alien ship. Evidently, the aliens had to control the vessel through some other means, but what precise means these were remained unclear, even as human boarding forces made unopposed progress into the alien ships, whose innards proved to be just as enigmatic as their outards. Velan began to speculate, and decided that it was more than possible that the aliens within the ship were not individuals, but instead were the fluid that the marines were trudging through carelessly. Of course, Velan would have to wait until the first wave of scientists were unleashed on the individual alien vessels — or until any potential, non-fluid aliens lurking within the alien ship attacked — to be proved right or wrong, yet he was unnerved all the same. As the human soldiers progressed further into the clawing depths of the alien vessels, they found it all but impossible to properly disperse themselves within the malefic, labyrinthine corridors; Velan could not fathom the purpose of their alien designs, but he suspected it wasn't good.

Knowing that Falmenec had a greater chance of making accurate deductions about the craft than he did, Velan turned to his friend and asked for some professional insight. "Falmenec, out of—"

Velan was suddenly cut off. His mind was throttled with a burst of pain and shock originating from his implants, one that, despite the MECS coursing through him, had almost rendered him unconscious: without warning or explanation, the marine Velan had been watching the action from was killed. The last thing the marine saw was a bright-golden flash, one that bore a striking resemblance to that produced by the alien ship-to-ship projectiles that had devastated the human fleet earlier. Velan's reeling mind was, in that same, singular moment, slammed by a barrage of casualty reports from boarding actions all across the system, as parties of marines were simultaneously ambushed across every single ship that they had boarded; in the space of but a single breath, over fifteen thousand human lives had been lost.

In the moments after the system-wide ambush, Velan watched as the initial assault every boarding force was suddenly assailed by alien monstrosities the likes of which were so horrid and so strange they nearly defied description, yet this made them no less capable at taking human life. Just like the ships they piloted, every facet of their body as black, though not as featureless, as the cold depths of space; though the aliens that attacked the human boarders were myriad in type, size, and purpose, they were unified in the fact that they were murderous, ruthless, and utterly lethal. Some were hulking, writhing, and brutish fiends whose quintet of limbs jutted out at the most unnatural angles the human mind could conceive, though that did not impede their strength; pulverizing a marine until they were naught but a stain on the ground came seemingly as naturally and with as much ease as lifting a finger. Many other monstrous aliens were more slender and nimble, and, on a set of six gangling legs, they scampered across the fluid-covered ground with incredible speed, driven by the single-minded purpose of leaping onto human soldiers and ripping them to shreds; as their entire, writhing, ever-shifting bodies were covered in spindly, barb-covered tendrils, alongside a few claw-like mechanisms, the beasts were brutally efficient at accomplishing this grim task. These savage creatures were supported by others, standing on three legs, while their pair of arms hefted black metal weapons not dissimilar from those their own warships utilized — these weapons slaughtered helpless marines with complete ease. Their weapons' firing produced a morbidly beautiful trill that sang to the humans as it reduced them to ash — a deathly orchestra to accompany the wicked choir of shrieks provided by their foul, fleshy wielders. In most cases, these nightmarish sounds were heard by their human prey, for the alien vessels seemed to have an atmosphere, and were remarkably good at keeping it in the face of attack; no one present had the time to analyze this atmosphere, however, nor did they care about it, but the infernal sounds within the alien vessels only made them a more terrible place to die. Indeed, the aliens' atmosphere was basically the only thing they owned that wasn't actively trying to kill the human boarders, so far. Not only were the aliens durable and terrifyingly lethal, but as they fought, their unnatural bodies sprouted new limbs, shifted their shapes, formed new armor or repaired wounds in seconds whenever the need arose, so fluid was their biology; those humans that were trapped on alien warships did not face a foe, they faced a nightmare.