July 19, 854 of the Common Era, the Ameza System, on the border of the Empire's Darklight Star Sector.
The fierce battle had ended three hours ago, but the battlefield was still burning.
More precisely, the energy that could not be recovered continued to burn across the vast reaches of the system.
Wreckage drifted through hundreds of thousands of kilometers of space: warships, fighters, assault craft, robots, automated turrets, even space fortresses. Some still turned slowly; others had frozen in place, locked in eternal poses.
An arc of electricity occasionally flickered through the broken steel, like the final convulsion of a dying man.
Uncontrolled fuel and electromagnetic energy blossomed into flames in the vacuum. There was no heat, no sound, only light that shifted between corpse-white and ghostly green.
Even for a mass grave outside a city, there were a few too many will-o'-the-wisps.
Half a day earlier, the armed faction calling itself the "Galactic Empire Orthodox United Army" had gathered more than two thousand capital ships on this remote planet. They owed those numbers to the Second Terra War, which had spurred the entire universe to research smaller warships.
In fact, more than half of this vast fleet had been built after the Terra War or during the Machine Intelligence War.
The old giant ships, like moving fortresses, paired surprisingly well with the new, knight-like warships. Until the age of the giant ships ended, this harmonious mix of old and new would likely persist for some time.
But none of that mattered to the Galactic Empire Orthodox United Army anymore. This fleet had been their most important force, their last major grouping of troops. Now, most of it had become wreckage.
The shattered remains of the warships ranged in size.
Some were as large as mountains; others, as small