Chapter 7 : Into The Gaping Maw
Captain Varan
The bridge of the Kruth vessel thrummed with an escalating sense of anticipation as Captain Varan gave his weapons master the order.
"Engage!"
His gravelly words carried the weight of command, a simple utterance belying the chaos about to unfold.
At his station, Darzuul acknowledged the order with a curt dip of his crest. His scaled hands began inputting the intricate firing calculations, telling streaks of alien glyphs cascading across his console's haptic fields.
Outside the Kruth hull, banks of emitters polarized and built to blinding intensities. The invisible interplay of energies reached a fever pitch as molecules of exotic alloys were catalysed into shearing, concentrated beams.
Then, with a silent fury, the forward arrays unleashed torrents of annihilation that set the void itself ablaze. Coruscating lances of luminescence lanced outward in blistering helix-streams, refracting through the inky blackness in dazzling spiral vortices. The bridge crew instinctively tensed as they felt the energy build up around them and then pour forth in an unrelenting tempest.
To any unknowing observer, the display would have seemed like a breathtaking fantasia of superheated energies - a twisted aurora utterly defying the orderly mechanics of conventional photonic weaponry. But Varan knew all too well the nihilistic purpose underlying such radiant grandeur.
These beams represented the Galactic Coalitions highest understanding of controlled photonic forces - a precision scalpel of violence as beautifully elegant as it was catastrophically destructive.
But as his gunners ceased the opening barrage, reality reasserted itself in the grim glow of the tactical displays. The hoard's vanguard had been struck head-on by the full brunt of the ships arsenal...and yet its blight-like emergence pushed ever inward, undeterred.
"Primary targets successfully engaged, Captain," Darzuul's voice cut through the tense air. " 30 percent casualties. Minimal fatalities. Orders Captain? "
Varan's lip twitched in a unconscious sneer of disgust. He hit them with his best and the hoard shrugged it off. Of course, they had - the hoard's existence alone mocked the conventions of warfare so deeply enshrined across the galaxy. This was not a strategic operation to be won through controlled applications of force.
This was a primal, existential struggle against a force utterly inimical to the concept of battle lines or vehicular attrition. The hoard cared only for consumption - an all-devouring, all-consuming hunger that seemed to feed on the very fires marshalled against it.
"Fire a second barrage," he finally answered, the words feeling hollow even as they passed from his jowled maw. "And then prepare to disengage on my order. We weakened them as much as we could for the humans."
The bridge crew couldn't help but feel a subtle undercurrent of relief pass through them as Captain Varan issued his latest orders. They knew better than to openly express such emotions in the face of the existential threat still bearing down upon them.
A fleeting look of grim resignation passed across Darzuul's features before the Weapons Master reapplied himself to his console.
The second salvo's shearing lances blazed forth in a maelstrom of annihilating incandescence, but there was no doubt among the crew as to its ultimate impotence against the eternal hunger welling up to meet it.
It was at that moment that Kurr'an, the Wennark monitoring the sensor banks, raised his crest in an unconscious gesture of surprise.
"Captain! I'm reading several small human spacecraft committing to an attack vector against the hoard wavefront!"
Varan swiveled his head with a predatory swiftness, his features contorting into a mixture of curiosity and dawning realization. So the reckless humans had decided to throw themselves into the abyss after all. He felt a pang of something approximating respect, tinged with profound disbelief at their apparent death wish.
"They can't be serious..." the captain growled under his breath. "Thay don't grasp the gravity of what they're facing."
His clawed hand reflexively manipulated the panels, cycling the main viewer to scrutinize this unexpected human Strike force. Varan's tufted brow ridge arched ever so slightly as his mind processed the miniature geometries resolving before him.
"Those aren't bombers or gunships - just short-range fighters!" He shook his head in bewilderment. "Audacious idiots is putting it generously..."
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But even as those words passed his mouth, another indicator winked into existence on Varan's boards. The large human spacecraft - the ambassadorial vessel - had taken the wise course after all and disengaged. Clever enya'alu, adhering to the edicts of self-preservation.
"At least the diplomats aren't complete shufra," he muttered in a brief aside to his tactical lieutenants.
Varan refocused his attention on the swarm of human fighters now committing to engage the hoard, wondering how long their ramshackle courage would last. If they were half as hardy as they were foolhardy, perhaps their sacrifices would buy some small window of time.
A window through which the Kruth could disengage...and prepare for the encroaching insectoids.
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Captain John Harris
The coruscating barrage erupting from the alien Kruth vessel lit up Captain John "Duke" Harris's tactical displays in a blinding brilliance more befitting some hellish aurora than a coherent directed energy weaponry. Radiation spikes and electromagnetic distortions rippled across his sensors in waves of screaming interference.
"Filters at maximum, lads! Let's not get our eyes and brains shredded by whatever fresh bullshit that xeno ship's packing," Harris barked across the squadron's comms.
He stared at his optic screens, trying to make sense of the chaotic shapes formed by the Kruth's powerful beams. This wasn't just fancy lasers. The energy those beams emitted seemed like something out of a sci-fi holo-flick, almost alive and powerful like it was light with anger issues.
As the searing barrage finally dissipated, Harris focused on the main tactical display showing the nearing insectoids, The Kruth bombardment barely etched a mark on the advancing horde's vanguard, like a mere whisper against the thunderous tide of their onslaught.
"Well...they tried to warn us," Grinner quipped grimly over the comm. Harris could picture his squad mates knuckles whitening around the control stick.
The hoard was entirely unaffected, its churning masses pressing forward with the same implacable enmity. The baleful vanguard front hadn't simply shrugged off the Kruth's firepower, its advance irresistible.
Harris's mouth went dry as the full, existential gravity of the situation crystallized. The Kruth fired a weapon far more powerful than the Sol Federation possessed. Yet it was little more than a bland disruption against this encroaching malignancy.
An unavoidable question suddenly haunted him: What chance did a small group of humans like the Sol federation have against these creatures? The chilling realization gnawed at his mind like a relentless force - none at all. They were insignificant, mere ants futilely resisting the crushing weight of their inevitable demise.
A shrill tone across Harris's comm shattered his spiralling sense of dread momentarily.
"Captain Harris, it's the Ambassador Ship! We've got our final escape routes and we're getting out of here fast.
"Copy that, Ambassador Ship. Get that package home safe and light a blaze under Command's decrepit asses," he replied with a clipped professionalism that defied the desperation gripping his combat logic matrices.
As the ambassadorial craft sped off into space, its drives flaring a brilliant farewell against the cold void, Harris cycled his squadron over to tight-beam tactical frequencies.
"Alright Aces...You’ve seen what I’ve seen, it looks bad but we need to get some worthwhile intel on these things and buy some time for the big guns to arrive."
He paused, the deafening silence of his cockpit overhead only amplifying the finality of his next words.
"We hit them hard and fast with everything we've got – Lasers, missiles and guns, ready to deploy at my command. We don't back down; we don't give an inch. Everyone's on full alert, ready to obliterate this threat before it even gets close to any colony space. Clear?"
As the grim acknowledgment rippled through his communications, Harris felt each terse response carry with it an unyielding resolve.
In unison, they fell into formation. Their movements were precise, a symphony of synchronized actions as they readied themselves for the onslaught ahead. Engines roared to life, and the squad's F-23’s surged forward, cutting through the void with relentless speed.
Harris's expression hardened as he watched the target telemetry fluctuate wildly across his sensor screens. The insectoid bodies of the enemy ships seemed to absorb and distort the sensor waves, rendering the readings erratic and unreliable. Despite the technological disadvantage, Harris and his Aces remained determined to confront the enemy with all the courage and skill they could muster.
As they neared the target Harris felt the blood drain from his face as the hoard's full, nightmarish magnitude resolved across his optical scanners. What his instruments had rendered as garbled, static-laced signatures now coalesced into a terrifying reality more befitting the rambled nightmares of a traumatized mind.
"Blessed..." Harris breathed, the knot in his throat threatening to choke his words to silence.
The haunting coordinates illuminating his panels showed no orderly phalanxes of warships or purposeful military formations. Instead, the hoard emerged as an obscene, churning tsunami of organic matter - a virulent, all-consuming broth of bio-mechanical terror.
At its nucleus, gargantuan bio-constructs dominated like obscene juggernauts, their forms little more than gnarled, pulsating amalgamations of flesh, chitin, and madly protruding articulated tendrils. Harris's combat-honed mind could scarcely resolve the existence of such grotesque leviathans outside the fever dreams of a psychological torture chamber. Yet there they were, dozens of them - lumbering, singular entities of malignant sentience that inspired the tight knots of primal revulsion.
Those nightmare juggernauts, horrific as they were, proved merely the rotten cherry atop the hoard's profane dessert course. Swarming around the towering flesh-hulks in frenzied, uncoordinated profusion were...things. Harris struggled to force his eyes to fully acknowledge the sheer, unquantifiable variety represented there.
Insectoid ravagers of every putrid morphological phylum - their chitin carapaces and distended forms bristling with bio-engineered weaponization. Legged abominations engaged in the consumption of asteroids and cosmic detritus, excreting propulsive torrents of caustic byproduct. Gut-wrenchingly amorphous blights that seemed to multiply and subdivide even as they coalesced into semi-sentient lashings of corrosive tissue.
Harris's mind attempted to impose logic and taxonomy on this abhorrent display. Yet the chaotic, nature of the horror recoiled at such orderly definitions. It was as if the hoard itself had been vomited forth from the desiccated womb of the darkest potentials...a tsunami of scavenger-monstrosities streaming in ravenous pursuit of sustenance.
A single, disquieting thought gelled across Harris's mind as he beheld the hoard's obscenity:
They had not encountered mere aliens, but a force of nature -.
And they flew directly into its gaping maw.