Hearth system: Galatine station

Gawain's sensors flitted across the system as the AI watched over his charges, routing system trawlers, cargo ships, and the occasional exploration vessel was admittedly boring grunt work for a class five AI such as itself, frankly it would kill for some intelligent conversation right about now.

"Gawain, do you have a moment?" someone asked the AI as they processed the flow of information around the system.

He registered the request coming from Major Pendleton's Quarters, the privacy block on his internal sensors in her room was lifted within thousandths of a second as he logged and practically lept on her request.

"Of course Major, I'm a class five Artificial inteligence, I have the collective computing power of fifty thousand human minds... frankly at the moment I'm rather bored." The AI replied from a speaker in her roof.

Of course Gawain was doing more than just guiding ships and coordinating regional demispace jumps, he was currently holding five conversations, three of which were with engineers and one of which was with an orbital dry dock manager, organizing the logistics of the stations maintenance drones, calculating his bodies current rotational speed and adjusting orbital positioning of Galatine all simultaneously. Gawain was the systems AI after all, his job was to keep everything running smoothly.

"Good, I have some questions for you if you don't mind." The Major asked as they looked at his holographic avatar.

"Ask away major," The Ai Replied while maneuvering a small tugboat out of the strike zone of a micro meteor. "Nothing too challenging is going on here."

"You're in command of all of the automated... stuff in the Hearth system right?" Major Pendleton asked.

"Correct, although security lockouts do keep me from doing some things such as asteroid redirection autonomously." The AI said with a hint of frustration, human paranoia had its virtues, but it certainly was annoying that it couldn't just shoot the asteroids out of their orbits whenever it found them. Instead he had to go through a long snaking bureaucracy just to fire one measly fifty millimetre to redirect it off course.

"And you're not allowed to participate in combat actions unless certain security lockouts are removed as a matter of course right ?" Pendton asked. Gawain calculated that she was approaching her current real question, he did find this kind of dancing around the real question mildly annoying but it did prolong the dialogue which kept this fragment of his intelligence occupied.

"Correct." The AI replied, he knew where this was going. "While I am capable of computing firing solutions and coordinating forces, I am not allowed to ever actually pull the trigger as it were without the proper lockouts being disentangled from my core processors and removed."

"And what would happen if you did decide to do so anyway?" the majors voice was tinged with curiosity.

"Instant termination." Replied the AI flatly, hoping to cut the head of this particular conversation's snake quickly as they could.

"Ahh... Well really I'm here to ask you about good locations to station my marines aboard the Galatine, after all, it is your body..." The major stated, looking somewhat subdued. Gawain smiled to himself, looked like his idea had worked, that idea had been shut down quite definitively.

Demispace: TUSS Vigil

Commodore Samada laid his hand on the dying man's head and whispered a prayer for him before he carried on to the next bed. The Sickbay on Vigil was once considered state of the art with automated doctors, those had been stripped out and replaced with ones made of flesh and blood once everyone realized just how simple disabling an autodoc was.

He looked on as a man in surgical scrubs turned up an IV drip on a moaning sailor who's entire front was covered in third degree burns, this was the price he had paid, and paid willingly. These boys and girls were suffering because of his choices, they were to be laid at his feet. The question Samada faced now, was simply was it worth it?

"Commodore, a pleasure to see you down here, I'm given to understand we'll be transferring out of demispace soon right?" Asked the head doctor of the sickbay, the elderly Abdul Hassan M.D..

"Yes Doctor Hassan, we will be." Commodore Samada said with a nod. "We'll be able to get them into a better medical suite once we doc with Galatine I hope."

"Indeed commodore, hopefully we won't loose too many more patients, the crew casualties are already rather... extensive." Dr. Hassan said as he looked at the Commodore.

"And Veracity is in even worse shape, Violent looks like she's been ran through a shredder, not to mention all of the lost crew-" The commodore continued before the doctor cut him off.

"Commodore, have you met anyone who lived through the union war...?" Dr. Hassan asked quietly, gently laying his hand on the commodore's shoulder.

"No, No I never had the privilege, almost all of them were dead before I ever was even born." The Commodore replied confused.

"One time, when I was only around forty years old I was fortunate enough to have encountered a real veteran of that dreadful war... he was ancient, almost a hundred and fifty years of age. He gave me some advice Commodore, advice I can see you need." The elderly doctor said with a small smile.

"I don't think that-" The commodore started.

"His name was Thaddeus Pyle." The Doctors statement caused the Commodore to go quiet.

"Men die Commodore, men under your command die all the time, often for no reason at all." The Doctor locked eyes with the commodore as he continued to speak, "they will die if you lose, they will die if you win, just as you will lose men you will also loose ships, you will lose aircraft, and other materials. Your job Commodore, is to make sure that they did not die in vain, of course they allready taught you that in OCS, but..."

"But it wasn't really real until now..." Samada said with a tired sigh, finishing the doctor's scentance for him. "Thank you doctor... I think I'll take my leave now."

Chanthem system: TUSS Vigil

Captain King smiled as his ship glided safely out of demispace and back into realspace. Slowly, the other two V class cruisers and their surviving frigate escorts formed up in the void, already their computers were receiving instructions from the system's AI.

"Welcome home Captain, unfortunately it seems that you won't be getting those security deposits back" Joked Gawain as the system's AI's Avatar flickered to life aboard the bridge.

"Apologies Gwain, it seems that that our new friends were rude enough to scratch the paint." Captain King replied, returning the AI's grin with one of his own.

"Seems that they did a little more than that" The AI remarked as he examined the damage that the ships had taken. "they really did quite the number on your rental captain, repairing her will take weeks if I were to bring her back to mothball status, and Veracity... I believe she will just have to be scrapped, I am detecting trace signatures of what appears to be among other things duct tape on her hull..."

King thought that the AI sounded somewhat amused, that was always a good sign. "Hey," the captain shot back, it's not like that's nessesarily a bad thing... ok yes she is quite dinged up, but anywaysI come bearing gifts!" Captain King said smiling. "Weapons data, estimated shield strength and even ship classifications it's the whole nine yards."

"Excellent, I imagine you're not going to just transmit it are you?" The AI asked hopefully, it's avatar rubbing holographic hands together in anticipation.

"Hell no, This kind of shit gets hand delivered. No offense Gawain, but its just not a good idea to openly transmit data like this. I'll let you get a peek later after we dock." King said apologetically

"You're no fun." Gawain replied, shaking their head l guess I'll just have to wait then..." The AI said Sighing melodramatically, "I'd kill for something interesting... Oh, by the way you might want to hold on to something, Overiding your automated docking systems and maneuvering Vigil to the docking ring now."

Captain King felt the ship gently shudder under his feet as she picked up speed and drifted towards the port. he was looking forwards to a hot shower and his bunk. "Much obliged Gawain, much obliged."

Hearth system: TUSS Veracity

The ship was eerily calm and quiet ghosts drifted through her halls as drops of blood hung in the air, some compartments were coated with a thin layer of frost and ice. At her bridge Captain Gwendolyn Mayer gasped heavily as she looked around the decimated command bridge. Even now splinters of metal floated through the air, shivering as, the failed artificial gravity generator attempted to exert its will over the ship, causing the floating objects to shudder and stutter through the air as they drifted.

"we made it..." She said with a smile looking over her half dead crew. "We're back home."

Her chief damage control officer, a swarthy Hispanic man named Jose Franklin started laughing, he took a weak step forwards and embraced his captain as blood from a shrapnel wound leaked from his side, they didn't have anywhere to put the wounded after the sickbay had been struck by a plasma torpedo.

"We did it..." Whispered maintenance officer third class Cameron Foch as he started to smile uncontrollably.

All over the ship, her surviving crew members started to smile, to laugh to cry to cheer... all 300 of the survivors from a crew of originally over a 1,500.

Chanthem system: Galatine station

Gawain looked over the after action report, if he had any eyebrows he would have raised them, especially at the losses section

Union Forces: 3 V class cruisers, 2 Destroyers, 6 frigates ??? Forces: 1 battleship, 5 cruisers 15 destroyers, 20 frigates, 10 corvettes Union losses ??? losses Ships Lost: 2 destroyers, 3 frigates Ships lost: 1 Battleship, 2 cruisers, 8 destroyers, 12 frigates, 10 corvettes Ships Damaged: 3 cruisers, 3 frigates Ships damaged: 2 cruisers, 7 destroyers 8 frigates Union Personnel losses ??? Personnel Losses KIA 8,960 KIA (Unknown), estimated up to 50,000 WIA 2,436 WIA (Unknown) Estimated up to 20,000 MIA 63 (presumed dead) MIA (unknown)

If this was true... they had met a vastly superior enemy force, and matched them... Gawain's interest was piqued. This bore looking into, he would have to go over the battle's recording in person to make sure this was correct.

Phaethon system: Phaethon orbitals

The Battlemaster looked down upon the green and blue sphere as his dreams began to crumble apart. When Groundmaster had finally, finally brought the humans to battle, they had somehow detonated some form of massive atomic weapon that had scoured their landing point, and the humans greatest city off of the face of the planet, they had UTTERLY destroyed their capitol city instead of letting the Ruk capture it.

"what kind of species... would rather wipe itself out than surrender..." he whispered to the ghosts of his command staff, looking around the staff. "Could this really be the last of them...?"

"Battlemaster... we engaged what we can reasonably believe to be their navy in combat..." One of his aids said tentatively, "What if they didn't wipe themselves out... what if there are more of them?"

The Battlemaster had no reply to that, but the entire command bridge seemed to shiver at that thought.

He would have to report this back to the Ruk Imperium, at least he wouldn't be held responsible for Groundmaster's failure, and he had already laid plans to have Voidmaster take the fall for the catastrophy in space... at worst he would just be considered an incompetent, and hopefully would not be castrated and then summarily executed... although as more and more bad news flowed in to his new command center upon the lightly damaged cruiser Nanbo he was starting to doubt that he had quite enough clout to keep himself safe from this.

"Plot a course for Imperial space... We'll leave the rest of the fleet as a garrison here, and report back... hopefully they will hear us out before doing anything rash." The battlemaster ordered, looking about the command bridge, daring anyone to object. No one did.

"Yes Battlemaster" the Nanbo's Shipmaster replied as he spun up the demispace drive.

Battlemaster looked over his own casualty report and despaired, this was not something that would be good at all for either his career. He had a bad feeling in his stomachs that they had done something that they really really should not have.