Chương 54: This Better Be the End

The next few months were some of the most unbearable in Erich's entire life. Every day, videos were displayed across the Galactic Network, and by extension the Germanic Star-Empire's interstellar network, of the devastation which the Naraku Hive Fleet Terminus was inflicting on the Dvrakian worlds.

The Naraku Hive Fleet never separated into smaller components, making it impossible to kill off large sections at one time. Instead, it travelled with all 2,700 of its remaining ships to each world, sending its vast hordes of soldier bugs onto them, to kill all hostile forces, before the harvester drones followed suit to reap the world of its resources.

The level of carnage and death was something that Erich had never witnessed before in his life. The soldier bugs, which were the size of tanks, shredded men, women, and children apart with their razor sharp pincers and devoured their remains whole. Or perhaps if one was particularly unlucky, they would be dissolved by the acidic compound which these bugs spat from their mouths at rates on par with most machine guns.

The Dvrakian People fought as hard as they could, and made use of the weapons that the Germans had sold them to kill as many of the bugs as possible, but no matter how many of the insectoids died, it just seemed like they were quickly replaced by more of their kind.

During this time, The Germanic Star Empire escorted refugees from the nearest Dvrakian Worlds into their own territory, while arming them to act as the first line of defense against the Naraku when they finally arrived in Germanic space. It was truly a no-win situation for the Dvrakian species who saw their numbers dwindle with each passing day.

Eventually, after months of nothing but death and defeat, the Dvrakian worlds had all been devoured and stripped entirely of their resource. In the end, these worlds were mere husks of themselves, and had become completely devoid of all life. Only a galactic power like the Alfheim Dominion had the technology to restore such devastated planets to a habitable state.

As for Erich, he had not been contacted by Mirage at all during this time. In fact, he had no idea what had happened to Splinter, who seemed to have disappeared off the face of the galaxy. No matter which of his contacts he tried to reach, Erich could not get through to them. Leaving him entirely alone on his carrier, as he waited for the day he was deployed in defense of the Empire's borders.

Erich would spend his days running simulations, which were similar to those he had participated in during his years at the Naval Academy. And when he was not engaging in simulated combat, he was, in fact, drinking his sorrows away. Eventually, he ran completely out of his stockpile of Asuran Palm Wine. But no matter how much he drank, he could not forget S'aleth's smiling face, or the wonderful but brief memories they had shared together.

Finally, the day of the Naraku invasion had arrived. With Erich being woken up in the middle of the night, once more to sounds of sirens and boots frantically running across the decks of the carrier. He quickly got dressed in his uniform and took a swig of his flask, which he kept hidden beneath his pillow. In the months since running out of his Asuran Palm Wine, Erich had consoled himself only with the sweet taste of Dvrakian Fire Whiskey, which reminded him of the woman he loved, a woman he did not deserve. Only further adding to the misery he felt….

Erich deliberately missed the debriefing. He knew enough about the situation to perform his job with satisfactory results, and thus he hid himself in the hangar bay consuming more of his whiskey until finally he climbed into the cockpit, half intoxicated. Erich waited for the Germanic Fleet to jump out of quantum, where they eventually came face to face with an armada of living ships that were nearly five times the size of those within the Germanic Navy.

And though the Germanic Navy had 25,000 warships available, and god knows how many smaller attack craft. There was simply no way they could contend with the Naraku Hiveships, which were practically the size of moons. Eventually, a message came through Erich's comms, which was his wing commander giving a brief but fiery speech to raise his unit's morale.

"Alright, this is it boys, this is our last stand. If the Navy is defeated here, then the world of Alemannia will be the first to fall to the Naraku invasion. No matter what, we must defeat the enemy, here and now! Or die trying!"

Erich could not stand to stomach the petty speeches that he had heard every day over the past few months. And because of this, he shut off his comms entirely before taking off his helmet and leaving it on his control panel. Because of this, Erich would now have to rely entirely on his own line of sight, and his starfighter's life support system to perform his role as a starfighter pilot. Luckily for him, his targeting array was imbedded in his NeuroLink, or else he would miss most of his shots.

Ericxh quickly pulled out his flask yet again and took another swig, before piloting his starfighter off the carrier's deck and into space, where god knows how many Naraku Reaper Drones were waiting for him and his comrades. By now Erich was a far more skilled pilot than he had been during the simulations he had undergone while attending the Naval Academy on Germania, but even then he knew how slim his chances of survival were.

After all, even if he was given a Heavy Bomber with a world killer torpedo on board, he did not even know which ship the Hive Queen was housed in. It was an entire joke to think that the Germanic Navy had even the slightest chance of victory.

Still, his homeworld was behind him, and thus, he would give everything he had for this mission, even if he no longer cared about the Empire and everyone in it. Because the last thing he truly had in this world were the memories of his childhood while growing up in Alemannia. Which, despite the difficulties he suffered through while growing up, he now looked upon those memories as if they were the best his life had to offer.

Erich hit the thrusters, and sped forward as fast as possible, perhaps in a suicidal charge towards the Nearest Naraku Reaper. He did not even rely on the controls of his joystick to launch the missile and fire the weapons. Instead, he commanded them with his mind, which gave him an advantage in speed. And thus, his starfighter rained a torrent of bullets and missiles upon the enemy, while not giving a damn about being caught in the splash radius of their effects.

This seemed to have done the trick, as it shredded the Naraku Reaper, but that was just one of millions, perhaps even billions, of such bugs. Thus, he quickly spun his ship around and fired on the next target, knowing that an entire flight group of the enemy was already chasing him down.

Yet, Erich did not care in the slightest, after all, the worst thing that would happen would be his death, and unfortunately for him, not even that was final. As he would most certainly wake up in a cloning facility, somewhere else in the Empire.

Erich continued to unleash a torrent of lasers, plasma, and missiles onto the Naraku Reapers, who somehow seemed so much easier to kill than in the many simulations he had flown over the years. One turned to five, five turned to ten, ten turned to a hundred, and so on and so forth.

Erich did not know how many bugs he had squashed, nor how many of his own comrades had fallen, as he did not have his comms on. He simply fought his damndest. Not for survival. No, that was not his goal, but to take out as many of these damn bugs as he possibly could before he himself kicked the bucket.

Eventually, after killing who knows how many Naraku, Erich's shields went down, no doubt from the corrosive nature of the bugs' guts, blood, and entrails, which had smeared themselves across his ship. Soon enough, this acidic compound began to eat through the hull of his ship, presenting an entirely new set of difficulties. Realizing that he would soon lose all oxygen in his cockpit, Erich quickly pulled his helmet back on, but not after downing what remained of his Dvrakian Fire Whiskey.

Over the comms, Erich could hear the chaos of the battlefield, and shouts of his dying comrades as they died one by one. Realizing that his time was almost up, he spoke into his comms for the first time since he had started the operation, and in doing so, let out his dying words.

"Fuck everything!"

After saying this, Erich used his cyberkinesis to maximize his engines, while also flooding his ship's reactor so that it began to overload. And just as his starfighter's antimatter reactor reached a state of critical meltdown, Erich had crashed into the nearest Naraku Hive ship.

The result was an antimatter explosion which disintegrated the entire Hiveship and everything in its vicinity. Including Erich himself. His last thoughts in this life, was how much he hoped he was not resurrected in a cloning facility so that he could join S'aleth in whatever afterlife may exist.

"This better be the end..."

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