By the time the Crownward March was deep inside Mournveil, the battle itself was already over.
What remained behind them was not a war anymore.
It was cleanup, confusion, and fear spreading through the Kharov cluster faster than any ship could fly.
Aurelian did not need to stay there to see it all happen. Eirenne's sub-core kept feeding him reports as long as the hidden backdoors she had planted continued to function, and the picture they gave was clear enough.
The Kharov had lost control as the cluster had been broken into pieces that could not trust one another.
The remaining garrisons were still alive, but they no longer acted like a single military structure.
One had locked itself down and refused to move. Another had begun shooting at ships with corrupted identification codes.
The research-station fleet was still waiting for confirmation from a command chain that was no longer responding usefully.
