Humanity Endures

Part 5 - War is Politics With Bloodshed | Chapter 3

The admirals of both human sides continued to manipulate their formations, strategies, orders, and tactics, as they sought to gain advantages over each other in a hectic, deadly game; the aliens acted as if they were a singular mind, moving with such precision and elegance they may have been flying in a mortal parade. Breakthroughs were achieved in the system-wide, three-dimensional front lines of ships, only to be suppressed with brutal losses on all sides; the aliens weaved in an out of the carnage, multiplying it, as they tore through their opponents with monstrous ease. Smaller engagements spread throughout the system, and bloodshed inevitably followed. As the brutality continued, the fighter clash just outside Tehkria, a favorite target for the opportunistic alien fleet, quickly became the deadliest death trap that the system of death traps had yet seen. Each pilot had to worry about the thousands of hostile fighter craft looking to kill them, the weapons fire of their allies, and the stray attacks of the various warships which were also invested in the fight. The jets and clouds of immolating alien plasma that shot through the vicious sphere of desperate fighter-craft with ease, consistently reducing thousands of fighters to ash and slag, were obviously also of major concern; it was difficult to keep track of all the threats to one's life, and if one tried, one would be so distracted that one of them would catch up. Even if a pilot, through unwavering luck or extraordinary skill, avoided all of this, they could still be instantly annihilated by a stray nuke or an inescapable beam of laser point-defence; such was the life of a fighter pilot in a climactic battle. All things considered, Lassarha wasn't surprised that Nahmatiixers were the most skilled fighter pilots in the galaxy, for they were the only ones foolish — or perhaps stupidly brave — enough to climb aboard tiny, single-person ships, and fight in such deadly engagements, happily.

Such was the proximity of the fighters to each other, there was, often, literally no room to maneuver; so dense was the whirlwind of fighters that if one were to be fighting in the center of the maelstrom they wouldn't even be able to see space, or an object five hundred meters ahead of themselves. This conflict was just as vicious as the one between warships taking place around it, and it threatened to be just as bloody — whereas with frigates and cruisers a single lost ship was a catastrophe that cost thousands of lives, with the tempest of fighters ripping itself apart in the middle of the system, hundreds of ships were destroyed with every passing moment. The life expectancy of a single pilot could now be measured in seconds, though even if the number of remotely-piloted ships amongst the Tehkrian force helped make the loss of life one-sided, the skill of the Nahmatiixers helped make the loss of fighters imbalanced the other way. Most fighter engagements were steadily being won by the Nahmatiixian fleet, and if these engagements were to be lost, the main Tehkrian force would be terribly exposed. Wherever one dared to look, there was death and catastrophe — the only way to end it was to cause more of it. Such was the tragic nature of the Alien War, and the Empire's "civil" war, now alike and indistinguishable in the brutality wielded. Despite the terrible rate of losses for both sides, there could be no question that there were still enough pilots and enough ships to keep the blood-red fires of war burning for some time, both in the fighter-engagement, and in the rest of the three-way unremitting slaughter that the battle for Tehkria had become. Lassarha, trying to improve her chances of winning against the aliens while also motivated by a desire to ameliorate the human bloodshed — and to have someone left to interrogate when the battle was over — repeatedly reached out to her Nahmatiixian counterparts and called for an end to their hostilities to combat the alien menace. However, and perhaps unsurprisingly, Lassarha received the same response each time: silence.

Lassarha was disappointed, and more than a little aggravated, but she didn't care terribly: so long as the Nahmatiixers were in the system, they would soak up some alien firepower, and so long as they were not allied with her, she could punish their treason as it deserved to be repaid — that was good enough for her.