God Race... Uh, I Guess They're Pretty Strong

(It's the end of the month! The end of the month! I didn't forget to ask for votes this time! If you still have any, don't forget to cast them—next month they'll be gone!)

The fierce exchange of fire had already been going on for thirty minutes. Neither side had even met face-to-face, yet they were beating the hell out of each other from dozens of astronomical units away. Blinding blue-white beams—though I thought their density made them more like a grid of light—had plowed through this stretch of space again and again. If there had been a planet between us, it would have basically been reduced to instant noodles by now.

This level of firefight had reached a stalemate. The massive warships on both sides were temporarily incapable of doing anything to each other. Unlike ordinary civilizations, their offensive and defensive capabilities developed in lockstep, rather than being horribly lopsided like Earth's guns, cannons, and tanks: a tank that cost twenty million to build could be destroyed by two thousand bucks' worth of explosives.

Even the Star River Main Gun would have a very hard time breaking through a Combined Shield in a short period of time. That was true for both sides.

Our Energy Scavengers and Combined Shields held back the storm-like Psionic Barrage, while the Vengeance Legion's numbers and the Eternal-class ships' sturdy construction left the relatively undergunned Imperial Army helpless. Both forces had deployed astonishing numbers of Space Dark Mines and collapse points before their lines. Those little things could kill any warship over five hundred meters long, making both sides' large vessels afraid to move rashly. Until the Combined Shields' energy ran out, this mutual bombardment would probably continue for a while.

But space warfare was not merely about trading shots—though that did make up