What was war like?

It was different from how everyone always talked and wrote about it.

It was just senseless killing and dying.

The first battle he had been in went like this; he sat in a fancy chair on the bridge of his older brother's ship, watching little pops of light in the distance as Hannan droned on about strategy, standing far too close.

He saw his ships moving forward, and sometimes chunks of the blue hulls of DASS vessels would float by, propelled through the void.

In the aftermath, bodies floated through the wreckage, all mangled by both the battle and the conditions of space. So many things he did not recognize, rended into corpses.

How many different alien species comprised the DASS? Four hundred thirty? He felt like he had seen more of them dead than alive.

He did not even remember giving orders. He did not remember the list of casualties on his own side.

After it was over, Hannan made him go to the soldiers' victory celebration, and he could not eat or drink.

Everyone there was older than him.

Such was the victory at Intera.