Aboard the ship dubbed the UNS Valor (Union News-Skiff)

  LOCATION: Minas’ Nebula

  EVENT: The Star-Way Conflict

  DATESTAMP: Second-Day, Block 3, 2445 GST (161 years ago)

  Stray cobalt beams soared overhead, narrowly missing the news-skiff as it clung to the shadow of the Union gunboat, Grim Resolve. Even at a hundred orbicmeters from the main engagement, the incessant comm chatter was a barrage of call-signs and casualty lists. Loud, merciless, and painfully dire.

  The Union was losing this conflict...

  The battlefield—if you could call empty space a field—was a clutter of twisted durtanium, reactor fumes, and dead bodies. Directorate warships, gleaming with golden vanity, cut like angry knife-fish through the nebula’s sunset haze. Across from them fought the resolute Union fleet. Blocky. Matte blue-gray. Outgunned. Built not to impress, but to last. Not a single unnecessary rivet, nor an ounce of wasted alloy.

  At their heart, space battles were nothing but savage ballets of light, shifting fields of shrapnel and chaos. And in this case, every blast of thermionic plasma, and every volley of neutrino torpedoes was rendered in 18K. Crystal clear. Courtesy of the news-drones flooding the space between vessels.

  The bridge crew of Valor was hard at work. Locked into safety harnesses, eyes set on the bank of monitors along the walls. The captain, a cadet on loan from the Union Academy, barked at the team piloting the drones. Orders to cycle through different angles, heat-maps, survivor IDs, and telemetry.

  Another drone vanished with a static whimper of blue sparks.

  “Four-Two-Six went down?" The captain asked, rhetorically. Youthful, but harsh. "Set a vector toward that cluster of gunboats! Keep to their port aft. It's a blind spot."

  She clasped shaky hands at her back, eager, but not incompetent, focused on a wayward drone meandering through the carcass of a mammoth-class cruiser.

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  "Ma'am?" A drone pilot called out, knuckles whitened around his joystick. "At this rate, we'll have to tie a glow-camera to some rope and throw it out the airlock. They're swatting these bastards down like flies."

  "A rearming platform is inbound. Till then, stay focused." Her gaze drifted purposefully around the room. "Remember, clarity first, action shots second. Let editorial worry about making it pretty."

  A Union cruiser barreled through a trio of Directorate corvettes, coruscations flaring in its vengeful wake. Four drones whirled closer for the money shot, hungry and relentless, two of their feeds immediately snuffed out in the secondary blast wave.

  “Contact!" The scanner officer alerted. "Ceespace jump, starboard side! Directorate ships from around that Class-Two moon!”

  A chorus of rising alarms drowned out the crew's withering composure. The captain pushed through to the comm and slammed down on the controls.

  “All hands, brace yourselves! Grim Resolve's tugging us back into the hangar! Analysis teams, transmit all data to our sister ships! Don’t let a second of footage go to waste, just in case!”

  Three Directorate Thar-Class destroyers lurched out of ceespace like cosmic wraiths. Overkill. Cruel. Aligned in perfect formation, beautiful hulls shimmering with murderous intent.

  During more civilized times, there would be little to fear, news vessels on both sides once held ironclad immunity.

  These were not civilized times...

  Dozens of thermionic lances sliced through Grim Resolve, blasting through its aegietheric, cleaving the gunboat in two with a blooming green explosion. The news-skiff, caught by the shockwave, spun helplessly away through a cloud of debris and rapidly boiling water.

  Had the GEG—Gravikinetic Equalization Grid—not compensated for the sudden inertia, everyone aboard would've splattered against the bulkheads. Instead, those on their feet were merely knocked onto their asses. Broken, but alive.

  The overhead monitors winked out as sparks showered the bridge. One by one. Almost every feed now a fuzzy snowstorm of static. On the last stubborn screen, the mighty Directorate vessels hovered above them in triumph. A brief moment to savor an easy kill.

  The captain crawled over groaning crew and broken glass, blood seeping through the fabric of her uniform. All to depress the warbled comm...one last time.

  “All hands...escape po—”

  Outside the wreckage of the UNS Valor and the Grim Resolve.

  LOCATION: Minas’ Nebula

  EVENT: The Star-Way Conflict

  DATESTAMP: 2445 (161 years to date)