Julian Terkon had a problem. The initial attack on the enemy Battleship dubbed Kyreikon Battleship 3, short KBS 3, had initially gone well, but by now they were pinned down far from anything important. As well as pinned down and quickly running out of grenades and demolition charges.

In a different, but nearby section of KBS 3, multiple kyreikon marine squads were readying themselves to assault the human position.

Julian knew he was dead. He knew it was over. Or was it? He began to plan a final fuck you for the enemy.

The Kyreikon attacked. Leutnant Terkon and his men fought valiantly, but were quickly overrun. One by one the survivors of the original 50 men strong force died. But, after the live signs of the last survivor stopped, a large explosion annihilated the room, and everyone who was in it. Those losses were not so bad for the battleship, although they would be felt if someone managed to board the ship a second time before the losses could be replenished.

But, what was really bad was the minor connection that had been cut. It was a fairly unimportant connection, at least on its own, and it had a back up. Which was reacting weirdly since yesterday, and no-one had yet found the issue. This faulty connection reported some minor things about the air quality.

A normal fairlure would have had no effect, but the wrong reports that were send across it had. Thanks to an unrelated bug, as well as some battle damage the ship would soon acquire, this faulty connection would be responsible for the death of everyone on board.

One of the Kyreikon light cruisers protecting the transports decided to fire upon two which were in danger of being conquered to prevent them of falling into enemy hands. That plan mostly worked out, but resulted in one of the attacked destroyers, which was in a far more precarious situation than it admitted, to fire upon it and destroy it. One of the transports was outright destroyed, the other had an internal fire which would result in its destruction within 5 minutes. Most of the surviving crew members, as well as a significant chunk of the boarders made it out in time. The one that was outright destroyed had no survivors.

While all that was going on, a third transport was taken, although its conquerors managed to conceal the fact that the Kyreikon transport was now under new management.

Lucas Carson was scarred. He was one of five pilots in control of the UES Revenge, which meant that he had a lot fewer big allies than the other two battleships. It also meant that the enemy had seemingly sent the two battleships for which the boarding attempts had failed in horrible ways to them. While the other side was fighting against three battleships, they had at least some damage. And all had been boarded at least somewhat successful, although there were no new messages about that for a while now.

He was not just flying the ship. He was the ship. It was a lot of fun, well, it would have been a lot of fun if there was not that annoying little factoid of the enemy ships over there that would soon be shot upon. And which would be shooting back.

The first exchange of fire upon the enemies forward squadron had begun, and the enemy had decided to target a destroyer and not his battleship. That was both bad and good. Good because it meant he personally was not under fire, and bad because the Revenge could take the beating. The destroyer could not.

He began to fly the ship, in coordination with the other four pilots like his life depended on it. Which it, admittedly, did.

The battle against the enemy forward squadron was quick and brutal. In the end, the enemy had lost two light cruisers and a heavily damaged destroyer that was currently in the process of being taken by its boarders. Who in turn got more support from the marines on board of the UEN ships.

Sadly, the UE forces around the UES Revenge had lost a destroyer.

On the other side of the earth, the fighting had gone well. One destroyer and two light cruisers had been destroyed in exchange for a bit of damage on a single destroyer, who was moved back slightly.

But soon the main fleets would meet. And it was still unclear which side would come out of the conflict victoriously.

The UEN was a curious institution. It had been formed with incredible speed, with very little to no experience, as well as no prior model of how to built a space navy available. It was also expected to go up against an enemy who had been space faring for millennia and had at least one major war against a technologically equal enemy in its past.

The Kyreikon Empire would extract a lot of blood from the UEN in the coming battles, some of it due to understandable mistakes, some of it due to the overconfidence the UEN gained after the second battle of Terra. They had surprised the Kyreikon, who had not even expected that anyone could attack them, in fact, as the UE would find out latter, the station over Terra was given to ships and crews who where at best second rate, and some of them, although admittedly primarily in the transports, were clearly incompetent at their job.

Terra had been a dumping ground for the Kyreikon navy, a fact that would bite both, the Kyreikon Empire as well as the United Earths in the buttocks.

The Kyreikon Empire because of the relatively late and very incomplete warning of the defeat over Terra, and the UE because of the overconfidence the relatively easy victory would inspire.

The warnings the the Kyreikon would be getting were incomplete enough that the fact that some ships had been boarded before the battle was joined had been missed.

Which would prove to be an advantage for the UE in a later battle.