Civil war...
Gawain stood near the edge of Melita's back, his line of sight passing over the enormous dragon wings as he gazed for a long time at the torn-apart port on the distant "horizon" and the wreckage of a spacecraft blasted into three sections by some immensely powerful weapon. The scale of those ruins was astonishing—one fragment floating weightlessly in the void was nearly as large as a castle. And the more one considered how indestructible such a thing must have been when intact, the more terrifying the force that had destroyed it became.
Indeed, only the Voyagers' weapons could have so cleanly and thoroughly destroyed their own legacy.
"I examined these destroyed wrecks carefully," Melita's voice came from ahead. "Some were clearly destroyed without putting up any resistance. The spacecraft were docked in the port, and the defensive weapons of the nearby facilities remained locked down. Others, however... destroyed each other in an internal melee. The port attacked the ships, the ships bombarded the port, wreckage was all mixed together, and there were marks left by collisions... It feels as if the command system here suddenly went mad and began fighting itself. And the result of that terrible 'civil war' is that only one intact spacecraft remains in this 'mother port'..."
Gawain silently listened to Melita. For a moment, he did not know whether he should feel relieved that the Sentinel had been severely damaged by a system conflict, or horrified by the dreadful destructive power displayed before him. His expression was complicated, his voice low. "You're right... The command system here really did go mad."
"It really went mad?" Melita turned her head slightly. She had not been in the cabin earlier, so she still knew nothing of the information left behind by the Elf Twins. "What