"Oh you motherfuc...."

  A loud, meaty whack interrupts the expletive, followed by the sound of two men grunting and a loud slam as something heavy hits the ground. Phillia creeps toward the gymnasium onboard the USS Catfish, looking for the Rear Admiral for a quick question. She reaches the open door and hears a different voice shout,

  "Oh, so the navy actually has some tee- Ah fuck!"

  There is a sudden gulping sound as an airway is obstructed by something gripping a neck. There is another loud bout of slamming and whacking, and then there is a deep inhale as the grip appears to have been released. Phllia enters the room and feels a wave of wet heat hit her face as the room is nearly steaming. In the middle, on top of the soft mats that make up the center of the gymnasium, Rear Admiral Hollander and his brother, Lieutenant Colonel Hollander, are in the middle of a fight. Both are wearing skin-tight shirts and pants labeled in what Phllia has come to learn says Army and Navy. Their hands are wrapped in tape, and they are barefoot in the brawl. The Lt.Colonel is bulkier than the Rear Admiral and seemingly focuses on strikes with his closed fist and sudden kicks aimed at the Rear Admiral's legs, looking to collapse his knees. The Rear Admiral, skinnier than his brother, seems to focus on trying to get close to throwing elbows or knees into his brother's torso.

  Phllia stands in the door for a moment, taking in the surprising temperature of the room and the tangle of profanities that the two officers are fighting. Then a large hand grabs Phillia by the collar, and she is lifted and carried by one giant hand to a side of the room. She is then set down onto the lap of a giant woman. Looking to her sides, she sees multiple of the giants watching the fight with a hunger in their eyes that Phllia cannot comprehend. Through her sudden shock, she slowly realizes that these women are all actually the metal monsters that patrol the ship, but without their armor. Their size compared to the other humans, even the males, is seemingly impossible because, as far as Phillia knows, humans are all one species, and the size difference shouldn't be possible in a single species. The one who grabbed her speaks lowly in her long ear,

  "Ah, it looks like our resident alien couldn't resist the greatest smokeshow on this side of the Milky Way."

  This causes the line of female Marines to laugh, and one comments sarcastically,

  "Eh, one's a soldier and the other a sailor, hard to really call either attractive, especially since they'd probably prefer one another over any of us."

  The group shares another laugh as the Rear Admiral grabs his brother by the leg, lifting it high into the air and landing a brutal kick to the back of his brother's knee before heading to the ground to wrestle. The oldest looking marine, a graying woman with various scars across her neck and face, wearing nothing but some tight shorts and a sports bra reading, "GILF", begins to speak,

  "Ladies, I don't know what you're talking about. If we weren't twice their size and double the men they are, I don't think even with our training we could touch either of them. Clearly years of fighting one another have made them experts."

  There is a loud slam that brings every eye back onto the fight, where the Rear Admiral had tossed his brother off of him in an attempt to stop a ground-pound from happening. Before the Lt.Colonel could get his bearings a he is leapt upon by his brother, who attempts to choke the Soldier. The choke fails, and the Rear Admiral takes the back of his brother's head into his nose, busting it immediately. This causes him to roll away, holding his nose as blood trickles between his fingers. The Rear Admiral says with a honking voice,

  "Okay, we're gonna play hardball now. I gotta remind ya, who's big bro once again."

  The two men stand and face each other again, circling around one another. The Lt.Colonel leaps forward with a flurry of quick jabs, his chin protected by his shoulder with each punch, keeping his brother on the back foot while protecting himself from a counterattack. The Rear Admiral can only hold his arms in front of his face and eat the punches against his forearms as he looks for any momentary lapse in the onslaught. There appears to be a mistake, and the Rear Admiral takes a leg-shot, only to realize too late that it was a trap, and the Lieutenant Colonel's shin rises to meet the downward motion of the Rear Admiral, cracking him hard and sending him onto his back. When it seems to be over, the Rear Admiral tangles his brother's legs with his own and brings him to the ground. They both grab one another's ankles and begin twisting, threatening one another with an ankle-lock submission.

  There is a low conversation between the two battered men, a conversation where they call one another expletives and ask the other to surrender. They stare one another down for a long time before the Rear Admiral lets go and loudly exclaims,

  "Oh, alright! I'll let you win this time!"

  The Lieutenant Colonel replies,

  "Oh fuck you. Don't act like you gave me the win."

  Rear Admiral Hollander looks at the spectators and with a shit-eating grin says,

  "Alright, he's the winner, ladies. He's all yours. Show 'em the hospitality of the Marines."

  The marine that had put Phillia on her lap picks Phillia up and sets her down before descending on the soldier, who screams in horror and agony as the marines start practicing their own grappling, definitely not copping feels in inapproptiate places. Rear Admiral Hollander quickly approaches Phillia, escorting her out of the gymnasium and closing the door behind them, silencing the sounds of the poor man being torn apart.

  Phillia shakily asks,

  "What are those monsters going to do to him?"

  The Rear Admiral laughs, wiping his nose on his workout shirt and replies,

  "Nothing at all really, maybe wrestle with him some, but if they actually do anything really overtly sexual to my baby brother I'll shitcan them so fast it'll give them whiplash. "

  Phillia nods as she follows the Rear Admiral back to his room, and the bloodied man asks,

  "So what can I do for ya?"

  Phillia recollects her thoughts before asking him,

  "I have a question about human warfare. How do you wage it? If this is not war, but just military... intervention... what does human war actually look like?"

  Rear Admiral Hollander shakes his head with a sharp exhale and responds,

  "I am going to change into my normal uniform after showering, after that I'll send for you and I'll give ya a short lecture. Okay?"

  Phillia nods as the human disappears into his completely dark room, not bothering to turn on a light.

  A few minutes later, Phillia is called into the Rear Admiral's room, where he has one of the strange human viewing devices set up on his desk. It has a black screen with a white triangle on it. Rear Admiral Hollander has her sit down and explains,

  "Well, I was just going to lecture you alone, but I found this little animation to go with what I can tell you. It's a drawn animation showing simplified examples of war. Basically a general overview of what happens rather than the grit of it all. I understand curiosity, but why ask this now?"

  Phillia shrugs and responds,

  "I was curious because of that speech you gave to everyone. That there is another human-on-human war going on. Since what you are doing against the Eternal Kingdom isn't a war by your standards, I am curious what constitutes a war."

  The man nods and rubs his chin for a second, and starts a short explanation,

  "The main difference between an official war and what we are doing now is two aspects. First, my government needs to have a nearly unanimous vote for a war to be official. The second aspect requires us to have an opposing government. Technically, our conflict against the Eternal Kingdom has been a military action against a religious extremist group that used faith to justify the unjust mass killing and genocide of a people.

  So long as the King or whatever doesn't stop by and offically declare war on us, I am allowed to act as needed to bring that Inquisitor asshole to justice. It's a little flimsy, but it is legal for the most part."

  Phillia is slightly confused by this line of reasoning, but she is capable of understanding it. The words and meaning make sense, but the overall idea of being able to be open and armed conflict, and for it not to still be a war, is foreign to Phillia. This causes her to ask,

  "I get the differences in justification or government involvement, but I really mean, what makes a war, a war for humans?"

  The Rear Admiral thinks for a second and responds,

  "Scale. Policing actions, military interventions, and insurgent subjugation are the three main methods of military conflict that do not constitute wars. These are generally localized to one or a few planets, maybe even a section of space, depending on the situation. Generally, these types of actions are done with single or small groups of forces. These forces are usually equipped for the specific task at hand. These are referred to as Low-Intensity conflicts. These conflicts usually require the minimum force committed to them at all times, and there is a lot of rotation of forces, except in our situation here, since we are so far from home.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  A war for us has two flavors. All-out, and an unnamed but more standard type of war.

  A standard war is where all forces available who aren't currently doing something else are activated for conflict and deployed along national borders. This means entire fleets of hundreds and thousands of ships are mustered, and millions of men are made ready to fight. This type of war can be anywhere from a few battles over contested systems lasting a few months until cooler heads prevail, or can be years-long campaigns where no one is really ready to commit to further escalation. These types of wars are strictly observed and watched in order to avoid things like war crimes. When someone does something bad, their own military removes them from the field and takes them to court.

  An All-Out war is a war where humanity decides to win first, and then pick up the pieces later. These are wars where everything, and I mean everything, is thrown at one another until only one side is left standing. These wars are rare for good reason, but can happen. These are the wars where we burn planets and every industry, civilian or not is targeted due to full war economies being put into action. Basically think a war of annihilation focused mainly on the government of the opposing side, but the allowed death toll is unlimited.

  All-out wars are the worst as we do not prosecute any terrible actions until after the conflict, because usually an all-out war is a fight for survival."

  Phillia considers these words, comes to the conclusion that humans add fancy words in front of what are at their and purposes, wars, because they practically traumatized themselves with big conflicts so much, they cannot see smaller ones as war anymore. Phillia then asks,

  "So, are your navy battles just instant death from an invisible foe?"

  The Rear Admiral shakes his head and points toward the screen, and a short video plays.

  The video shows a very crudely drawn human vessel lined up across from another crudely drawn vessel of a different model in some manner. Video expands its view, showing that the ships are really far apart. Both ships send out some sort of waves, and when they hit one another, they reflect back to their ship of origin. This seems to awaken both vessels as they begin acting strangely in a way Phillia cannot understand. The confusion is clear on her face, so Rear Admiral Hollander explains the start of the video.

  "Okay, so when two ships enter a system, they send out a series of invisible waves to check and see if there are enemy vessels. These waves are somewhat similar to certain types of your mana, but are still different, seeing as your people cannot detect them. When they hit a target, they create an echo, which is what our ships listen for. Our ships and crews are able to figure out where an enemy is by how the echo comes back, depending on how slow or at what angle it echoes back. This allows us to see if a target is moving, standing still, how fast it's moving, and a few other spatial descriptors of a target. This is step one of our combat, and it's almost unavoidable in space to be detected in this manner. Some other methods we use like this utilize light and a few other types of sensory waves, as certain shapes cause problems for the original waves when it comes to detection. Also, we do thermal scans, which let us see the heat of a vessel since all human ships are easily found due to their temperature, depending on whether you are looking at or away from the local star when looking for an enemy.

  After figuring out there is another ship in the local area like our ships, we go through the process of figuring out if it's an enemy, a friend, or neutral. If we are in a non-combat area, this is easy because all ships are constantly letting out signals that tell everyone who they are and where they are from. These signals are sent out in every direction by the same waves, similar to man, but aren't. If it's a combat zone, more scans are done utilizing what I think you'd call telescopes and other optical equipment, as well as using the other waves to help us decide the shape and defining features of the vessel. This usually tells us who made it, so that gives us a good idea of who it belongs to.

  The tricky part is being undetected while detecting an enemy, because the same waves that you used to sense them can be sensed by them when the waves strike them. Luckily the one being detected has a slightly harder time pin-pointing where they are being detected from, but this usually takes a few seconds to figure out, and as you can see in the little animation the ships start moving as they try and decide if the other is a friend or foe, and trying to figure out exactly where the other is. This movement can sometimes throw off sensor systems, or can allow one vessel to find something to hide behind which makes them even harder to detect.

  After all of this is the locking phase of target acqusition which bascially means all of those sensors, wave generators, and other forms of detection decide a target is an enety and they track the target constantly which in a few seconds becomes a highly detailed rendering and all information on heading, thermal spikes, and weapons usage which are all important things in combat... the thermal spikes are a sign the ship is attempting to either move, or had just fired certain types of weapons."

  Phillia ponders this for a while and asks,

  "So your people prefer to do dishonorable ambushes mainly as combat?"

  The Rear Admiral takes a moment to think about his response and tells her,

  "We humans generally prefer to win battles with the least amount of casualties possible on our own sides. Stealth and other more underhanded tactics are needed to fight like this, and no, it's not really stealth in space, especially if a ship is sitting in front of a planet or other celestial body, which allows for more sensors to notice the contrast faster. The only way to hide from a human ship is to either be so far away that no one can see each other, or to hide behind a random asteroid, moon, or planet."

  Phillia simply nods at the explanation, her point being that she is suprised the humans don't openly state their side and heraldry when engaging in combat first, but having seen their weapons, there probably isn't much of a chance of a fair duel, even she understands the concept of shoot first, win first. She watches the screen where what looks to be human skulls and crossbones are flying between each of the modeled ships and impacting into one another. The Rear Admiral practically reads her mind and explains,

  "Alright, there isn't an analog for your people on this one. So the voice that sometimes comes from the ship itself is called an AI, that monotone female voice. Well, there are multiple on each ship of varying purpose and capability. The one that talks is known as the Ship's AI, which is basically the soul or personality of the ship. What is depicted there is known as the Electronic Warfare phase of combat, which takes place immediately after figuring out that the other ship is an enemy and throughout the rest of the combat.

  There is another one of these AI dedicated to trying to kill the other ships' AI's onboard, which then would allow it to mess up their sensors, targeting systems, weapon systems, or even just make them overheat and explode in space by turning off all cooling systems. That's probably the best way I can describe it without giving you a huge and long lesson on how computer systems work, but just think of it as the ship sorta has a soul and we try to destroy the enemy ships one during a certain part of combat..."

  Phillia sits there entirely lost on this concept; somehow, giant metal vessels have something similar to a soul. One of the medical staff tried to explain what an AI was to Phillia before, but that failed as well. So in Phillia's mind, she is coming to terms with the idea that humanity has somehow gained the ability to create artificial souls since she learned the acronym of AI stood for "Artificial Intelligence". Not only can humans imbue soulless creations without mana with artificial souls, they also utilize them as weaponry against others of the same kind.

  The expression of confused shock is evident on her face, so the Rear Admiral sighs and continues,

  "Okay, after the AI fight and continue to fight, we start shooting at one another. It should be known that all of the complicated initial actions, including the AI fight, are done in less than a few seconds.

  So for us, shooting isn't simple because no one wants to get shot. Most main-caliber or the main weapons on modern ships mean immediate death if they manage to land a direct hit. Glancing blows from the biggest of weapons mean much slower, but guaranteed deaths, much of the time as well.

  There are three range groups when it comes to fighting in space for us, or at least in our doctrine, which tends to be more like guidelines than rules, because there are always exceptions and rare moments in combat that require these ranges to be disregarded.

  So the longest range is about the distance between two close planets in a system and beyond, or just about there. This range is tricky because all the information about the enemy is delayed by seconds, which means you are aiming at the point the enemy was in the past. This means the weapons fired are independently guided and sometimes are autonomous. We call them missiles, but they are basically very small self-propelled weapons that can turn and rotate in order to hit enemy targets. These weapons are able to carry all kinds of payloads, which is how they do damage. You saw the ones that explode into a temporary sun, those are called nuclear weapons, and at long range, as we call it they are the most used as it's always better to instantly kill your foe from a long way away rather than letting them get close enough to hurt you back.... yeah that's long range according to the handbook.

  Then there is medium range, which is where most combat is done because at this distance, there is not much delay for information. This is about the distance between a moon and the planet it orbits, so about the entire sphere of influence of a planet is this range is a good description. At this range, almost all weapons are viable because the distance they have to travel is much less than the longer ranges. Many ships are designed to fight at about this range, but of course, there are exceptions. This range generally uses the guns of the ships, firing large metal slugs at one another at high speed, which usually results in massive damage when they hit a ship. This range is also the most dangerous because it's all a matter of landing the first shot.

  The final range is short range or boarding range, which is within a few thousand miles of one another, to have the hulls of the ships touch. Everything is used at this range, including defensive armament as offensive tools as this range means the enemies are trying to get onto your vessel and that's really not a good thing because all the armor for a ship is on the outside and well placed explosives on a ships interior can gut it like a fish.

  Well, those are the ranges, and as the animation shows, there is a sort of dance ships do when fighting one another, so they don't get hit, while still being capable of using as many weapons on their target as possible. Of course, the craziness of these maneuvers depends on who is piloting. So that's basically how humans fight. Any questions?"

  Phillia sits there absorbing the ranges the humans consider normal for fighting. She isn't a navy person at all, but she knows Eternal Kingdom ships at most fight at the boarding range at most, but she doesn't fully know the numbers. Her main takeaway is that humans do not fight; they kill. If there is no fight, then the humans consider it a good battle. The memory of her father and his army being decimated by the humans fills her mind as she realizes that if the Rear Admiral had so wished, the entire army would've been annihilated entirely if it meant his people got out. She now has an appreciation of the cowardice of her father's force,s whom she had so desperately tried to keep from routing after he and his officers all died.

  The only statement about what she has seen with human capability terrifies her. She asks the Rear Admiral,

  "You've shown nothing but restraint..."

  Rear Admiral Hollander nods quietly before stating,

  "It's because we know the consequences of a lack of restraint. We have many worlds that can no longer bear life because of our past lack of restraint."

  Phillia feels the color drain from her face as she understands the humans on a more fundamental level now. They do not wage wars, they simply continue to perfect their innate desire to slaughter.