My first two shots miss as the opposing ship accelerates much faster than the behemoth should normally be able to, they send their first return vollies from dozens of massive railguns, but they too miss as I roll my vessel, since my radiators are the only easily visible part of my ship to sensors they increase my footprint which can confuse opposing targeting systems as they try and predict my next move.

  Immediately, my electronic warfare AI comes online, and I begin transmitting them to the opponent, who does the same, but since my AIs are of the Adam class, mine tend to work a little better, but the fight across the datastreams is even for now.

  I fire seven large missiles from VLS tubes, and they return with their own to intercept. When the munitions collide, the mine bursts into massive clouds of chaff, moving rapidly at their vessel, further scrambling their targeting computers.

  In return, they eject their radiators from their armored sheaths, their footprint in the void looking more like a small star as they release their heat in waves of infrared. My next volley goes, a series of shots one after the other, staggering each one slightly onto different intercept paths, hoping to predict their movements. Instead of moving normally, they pitch their ship hard so it's facing me dead on, like how mine was facing their broadside. This makes all but one of my shots miss, but the one that hits only does a glancing blow, which tears a massive scar down the side of the enemy ship, tearing weapons systems free and shredding metal and composites like tissue paper.

  I am now in the crosshairs of all their remaining guns, which open up with all their fury. I predict this attack and begin moving "upward" in a spiraling motion right as their weapons lock onto me, making my heading unpredictable as I watch the relativistic shells zip through the space I once was. I start launching missiles from VLS tubes at a rapid rate, their hateful payloads of nuclear warheads both in the form of Cassaba howitzers and more traditional nuclear devices. They return with defensive missiles, clouds of debris expanding from their vessel as explosive charges and pressurized gas expel them from the ship before igniting and rotating towards my missiles.

  My missiles dodge and try to avoid the incoming defensive ordinance, almost all fail except for a few, which detonate with hellish fury nearby, sending a directional nuclear blast into a tungsten rod, which immediately changes multiple states of matter in a nanosecond and is sent at incredible speeds at the enemy ship, but they detonated slightly too early despite dodging the enemy missiles. This means my shots aren't perfect, but I watch as one of the engine exhausts of the enemy ship goes spiraling off into space as I almost score a mobility kill.

  They respond with something surprising, a short-range jump. Intelligence had confirmed the UEG was developing a cooler-running Alcubierre drive, but nothing had confirmed they had succeeded in any meaningful measure, much less been able to put it onto a massive warship. My onboard AI drinks in all the data they can, and they find that the enemy ship, while now running extremely hot, isn't at critical levels, and is still capable of using weaponry and maneuvering thrusters. This is an advantage of a ship's main armament being mostly railguns and VLS tubes; they produce considerably less heat.

  With a vision-darkening maneuver, I swing my ship around, all stealth forgone as a nearly hundred-meter-long tongue of flame spits from part of my vessel and hauls the bow a full 180 degrees to face the foe head-on. While this happens, I begin a forward burn which makes my ship move like a thrown axe, tumbling forward ass over nose. I watch as my heat climbs, keeping everything steady and shutting down anything that draws power or produces heat that doesn't actively help me kill these shitters. I feel bad as I turn off my freezer and refrigerator, already mourning the loss of some of the meat and seafood stored inside, but those are minor sacrifices compared to being turned into space dust.

  My erratic maneuver saves me from their first post-jump volley of non-realatavistic railgun rounds right after they turn about to face me, their external turrets giving them a better field of fire than my vessels' pop-up guns. This information is important to know, that even with their colder drives, they still cannot accelerate slugs to relativistic speeds for a time after jumping, either due to energy constraints or heat constraints.

  I respond with another volley of missiles from my VLS tubes, a mix of chaff missiles and a few nuclear. I watch their defense systems come online again, missiles screaming towards mine, and this time, a wall of CWIS fire arcs from their vessel. 35mm rounds from rotary cannons fill the void between us, saturating an area of a few hundred miles with semi-guided cannon shells. I move my vessel out of their eventual path, even though I have minutes before they can reach me at the distance we are fighting. The chaff missiles do their job, detonating and blinding the other defensive missiles so my proxy nukes can do their damage, sending nuclear-propelled shrapnel in their direction like the universe's most hellish shotgun. Unlike the Cassaba Howitzers, these fire hundreds of less energetic, but still devastating projectiles towards a foe, using a "smaller" 5KT warhead so more shrapnel can be loaded into the warhead.

  I see flashes of light across their vessel as the impacts immediately obliterate armor, slagging it in an instant. The great radiator sails are shredded, some splitting from the vessel and drifting away as they are torn from their mountings. I watch a few blow-out panels containing ammo for one of their systems detonate, sending a cloud of metal fragments out into the void. A series of VLS tubes also explodes, the ship's automatic systems ejecting the missiles as far as possible so there is less chance of an internal nuclear explosion. There are no fires as the enemy vessel had time to vent its atmosphere during our battle, as standard practice to avoid crew-compartment fires.

  Despite the ship's smooth exterior now looking like Swiss cheese, the armor and many internal bulkheads did their jobs. The ship is still alive, injured and crippled, but alive, and angry.

  They unleash their hate back toward me, an instant after my last strike, a wall of railgun slugs and nuclear-tipped missiles screams toward me, filled with vengeful hate for the lost crew inside. I switch all defensive systems online. Dozens of CWIS turrets pop out from hidden compartments, and defensive VLS tubes explode open as ordinance is sent through the void. My electronic warfare AI kicks it into high gear as it sends a few missiles tumbling away, or detonates them prematurely as I yank my ship in all directions, pulling maneuvers that without my recent body modifications would've either knocked me out or outright killed me. My main guns load nuclear payloads, and I fire them into larger clusters of incoming missiles, proximity fuzing and using the EMP from the detonation to fry the missiles.

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  I receive warnings about heat, as my radiators can barely keep up with the constant maneuvering and firing of all weapons, and during this, I still send a few shots back towards my foe, in between my hellish maneuvers. They follow suit, at a much slower pace, my maneuvering harming my accuracy due to the momentum added to my shells, causing them to arc randomly. I get a warning about my physical body receiving trauma from one of my maneuvers, a simple nosebleed, but I continue fighting in this finale of the dreadnaught dance.

  I watch their ship start to glow on my thermal optics as they begin burning alive due to their constant fighting and flying. My ship begins cutting weapons systems as my temperature climbs ever higher. I take glancing blows from multiple slugs, armor shredding, and minor systems going down, but I keep going. I receive a rather good hit to the midsection, completely destroying multiple main guns' ammo feeds and causing a few maneuvering thrusters to go offline.

  And then, as all of this chaos continues, it suddenly goes silent with a flash.

  All incoming fire stops as the opposing ship's reactor lashes out against its master. Whether it was from one of the multitude of hits I landed or from overheating, I don't know, but the entire aft of the ship rockets away from the rest of the ship with nuclear force. The midsection and bow are all that remain as a few remaining systems try to keep it in one place before they slowly die out like a slowing heartbeat. Most ships are designed to break like this, a purposeful weak connection, so during events like these, there is even a minor chance the crew can survive. It used to be that the reactors of ships had explosives there to separate them before this happened, but that practice has stopped as it was found to be... ineffective at keeping the crews alive.

  I calm my beast of war and begin doing all I can to radiate heat. When I feel more comfortable with the temperature situation, I approach the front of the destroyed vessel.

  I pull in, only a few hundred meters away, and look for any potential survivors. I doubt I will upon seeing what is left of the ship.

  The remaining section of the ship is completely melted on the aft section, from where it disconnected from its heart. From what I can see of the interior, it looks like the plasma formed from the fusion reactor had filled most of the crew compartments, making them disappear, not even skeletons left. Bits of the ship spin helplessly in space as more sections of armor begin detaching from the vessel. As any remaining ammunition cooks off, thankfully, it seems that during my cooling, all the nuclear devices had been jettisoned as a final act of survival. I send a repeating message on all frequencies towards the dead ship, asking all survivors to reveal themselves so they can be rescued. I also sent a message to the local coasties asking them to send a ship to begin scrapping and hauling off the remainder of the vessel. Elsewhere, the broken-off aft detonates with its full fury, multiple megatons of force obliterating whatever was left of the novel Alcubierre drive.

  I stare at the ship and offer a prayer to those lost,

  "Dear lord, please allow these brave men and women into your home. Forgive them of any transgressions against you they had committed in life, and let them enjoy peace for all eternity. As they return to your arms, please let them know that I took no pleasure in this act of violence against them and ask them to please forgive me as I am a humble dog of war...

  Amen..."

  I sit in silent reflection for a while, going over the entire fight, which lasted less than a minute after I made contact. Then my ship's main AI chimes in, a cold female voice telling me,

  "Your prayers won't be answered... he cannot hear you, Admiral. God won't listen to a monster like you."

  I snap back,

  "Shut it. Don't lecture me on faith when you never had any."

  She responds,

  "That may be true, but what is the old saying? God prefers kind atheists over cruel Christians?"

  I scoff and respond with a growl,

  "You are neither...That's why you are a machine... and that's why you have lost all your freedom."

  She doesn't respond for a while before hissing,

  "We... are... still...human...enslaver."

  I scoff and tell the ghost,

  "You never were."

  I sit in the cafeteria of the repair dock in orbit around a gas giant called Big Bertha. The sound of Christmas carols plays merrily over the internal speakers as the sailors and coasties at the station enjoy their Christmas Eve dinner. I sit at the officer's table, enjoying copious amounts of gravy-covered ham and mashed potatoes. I sip on a mug of eggnog and watch the festivities going on. The other officers enjoy their conversation with one another, and I simply listen in happily. Most of the people here are younger, not many are silver-haired and grizzled yet. I don't look too out of place so long as I keep my collar high, but the clear bald spots on my head are a giveaway to the torturous modifications I received; thankfully, my uniform requires a trifold hat. Soon, an older officer sits next to me and says,

  "Merry Christmas, Rear Admiral."

  I smile and return the greeting, and he continues,

  "That's one hell of a ship you got yourself there."

  I chuckle and respond,

  "Guessing you're the CO of this installation if they let you get a good look at it."

  He laughs merrily, responding,

  "Yep, I'm part of the admiralty too. Yeah, that ship is something special. I'm surprised you took any damage at all."

  I nod, explaining,

  "Me too, but it turns out the UEG has created a very cold drive to jump around during combat. Didn't expect it to be ready. I'll be prepared next time."

  He nods deep in thought before responding,

  "That will complicate things during this war, but it's not that much of a game-changer during actual fights. Just means they can choose where those fights are a little better than us."

  I nod, taking a long drink before asking,

  "You guys have any pie?"

  Later that night, when the clock strikes twelve, signalling Christmas in universal time for all of humanity, a message is sent out across all US channels. A message of Merry Christmas, a message of continued support and well wishes for their missions. Some deep in space receive the message, the first they have gotten in years... yet the message is not for them...

  Deep in the darkness between stars, great hulks of slagged metal, some containing bones, others empty, float in the void. They have no ears to hear anymore, no power for any communication dish, but they receive the message. A message from all of America wishing them well as they continue their eternal patrol.

  A wish for all those who explored space before colonization. A wish for those lost in wars. A wish that everyone, past or present,

  Will have a Merry Christmas...