Chapter 2: Ambush

Chapter 2:
Ambush

 

THEN CAME THE THIRD DAY of guarding the private supply ship alongside Serena’s Pirate-Hunting Unit.

“Your presence is making it awfully difficult to attract pirates,” Serena complained.

“How is it my fault?! They’re onto your bait strategy by now!” Either that, or they were so beaten up that they didn’t have it in them to attack anymore.

“Impossible! I’ve just switched out the ship IDs and names.”

“Jeez, she says that like it’s nothing…” Elma chuckled.

“The power of the state is terrifying, indeed…” Mimi shuddered.

Ship IDs were unique identifiers given to each spaceship. No two ships had the same ID, and they were important to keep track of each ship’s affiliation and the like, so you normally wouldn’t change yours.

Keyword: normally.

Not that there weren’t loopholes, of course. Almost every pirate out there used the ship ID of ships they had shot down. That made sense, given that the ships they used were basically souped-up ships that they had stolen. Anyway, changing your ship’s ID meant that it would be treated as a different ship. Serena’s claim that she had just changed the ships’ IDs was a dangerous slip of the tongue—though I just ignored it, of course.

I noticed that Chris was suspiciously silent. I turned to see what was up, and she had closed her ears and zipped her lips. If this were a manga, her mouth would be in an X shape right now. As for what everyone else was doing…well, there wasn’t much to do besides be on guard, so the girls were all on standby in the cockpit. Serena herself seemed bored as well, given that she wouldn’t leave us alone. Apparently, fewer pirate attacks meant more paperwork for her, so she was cooped up in her cabin doing just that.

Serena was constantly bugging us—people who weren’t even her coworkers—in order to blow off steam. I had to wonder about her workplace relationships. Was she a loner?

Mei, meanwhile, was cleaning the ship. We tried to keep our living space tidy, but she said that fine dust particles were collecting, so she had been cleaning whenever she had time over the past few days.

I finally answered. “Since we can’t prove whether or not it’s my fault that pirates aren’t coming, let’s just ignore that whole thing. Lieutenant Commander, how often do pirates show up in the Cierra System in general?”

“You also ignore things that are your fault,” she said huffily. “Anyway, after that large battle the other day, sightings have been declin—” Before Serena could finish, alarms went off in the Krishna. It seemed our supply ship had been interdicted.

“Looks like the time has come,” I smirked.

“We’ll head your way immediately,” Serena replied. “It will take about five minutes, as we’ve kept our distance. Hold on until then.”

“Aye aye! Mimi, switch the radar to close-range battle mode and open comms with the Pelican IV. Elma, the defense systems are all yours. We’ll be in battle as soon as we return to normal space.”

“Understood.”

“Okay, Boss.”

I adjusted the Krishna’s thrusters and FTL drive to deal with the interdiction. The Pelican IV seemed to be trying to escape, but they wouldn’t make it out that easily.

As I recall, interdictors worked by making an artificial gravity well, which would forcefully drag ships going faster than light back into normal speed. I remember reading in Stella Online that artificial gravity devices on ships were extremely powerful.

The interdicting side just had to keep the artificial gravity fixed on their target, while the ones being interdicted had to try to move their ship in all directions to escape it. A small, mobile ship like the Krishna could escape it, but not a large supply ship. The Pelican IV didn’t stand a chance.

“This is the Krishna,” I hailed the other ship. “Pelican IV, respond.”

“Pelican IV here. We’re being interdicted by an unidentified ship of unknown affiliation. We’re trying to escape, but it isn’t going well.”

“End your FTL drive without resisting. That’ll make it easier to fight back, and it should be easier on your generator. Once you’re back in normal space, shift output to your shields. The cavalry will be there in five minutes.”

“Understood. Good luck in your fight. We will prepare for close combat.”

The Pelican IV had some of the Pirate-Hunting Unit’s own “naval” soldiers, so to speak (that was what the empire called face-to-face battle personnel stationed on ships), equipped with power armor and heavy arms. When the pirates boarded the ship to steal some loot, they would be greeted by burly, well-armed men. I almost felt bad for them.

“This is probably gonna be a fight,” I told the girls. “Everyone, make sure your seatbelts are on. Mei!” I opened a call with Mei, who was still cleaning.

“Yes?” she responded promptly.

“We’re about to go into battle. Stay safe back there, okay?”

“Yes, understood. Good luck, Master.”

“Thanks!” I wrapped up the conversation and checked the ship’s status again. Serena had resupplied our flak ammo, so everything was in tip-top shape. No way I’d lose to space pirates.

“Pelican IV has reduced their output. The number of unidentified ships is— Huh?!” Mimi gasped.

“Mimi, what’s wrong?”

“U-um, there are eleven ships in total, but…”

“But?” I urged.

“There’s one large… No, one battleship among them, along with two cruisers!”

“Oh. Oh, I see.”

When we referred to large ships on the radar, that would be equivalent to cruisers in terms of warships. Battleships would be even bigger. By the way, destroyers were somewhere between large ships and battleships, while corvettes were usually seen as medium.

“I’ve got a really bad feeling about this…” Elma groaned.

“Heh, same here. Once we get out, deploy chaffs and flares immediately. ECMs, too.” I let out a dry laugh as the interdictor succeeded, dragging the Krishna into battle. At the same time, I brought the generator to maximum output and used the afterburners to accelerate sharply. “Would you look at that, folks?! A merciless surprise barrage!”

“This isn’t funny!!!” Elma screamed.

“Eeeek!” Mimi shrieked alongside her.

Blood-red lasers pierced the space where the Krishna had just been. If not for my acceleration, they might’ve scored a direct hit on us. I disabled flight assist mode and activated the attitude control thrusters while maintaining our speed and vector, causing the Krishna to turn toward the battleship.

“They’re outdated, but those are definitely the official ships of the imperial fleet,” I noted. “The fleet sure has shoddy security, huh?”

It was obvious this was no normal pirate attack; pirates couldn’t get their hands on eleven imperial ships. No doubt Balthazar had recruited them explicitly to help with killing Chris. These were just like the stealth dropships from the attack on Cierra III.

“Jeez, how brazen can they be?!” As Elma screamed, I activated the thrusters again and charged toward the battleship. Staying far away from a battleship would be a foolish plan; the further you were, the more likely they could just shoot you full of lasers.

This meant dealing with G-forces that even the Krishna’s inertia control device couldn’t deal with, but we’d just have to grit our teeth and bear it. Elma and I were mostly fine, but it was rough for Mimi and Chris. Especially Chris.

“Uuuurk!” There was a pained groan behind me, but unfortunately, I couldn’t help Chris right now.

The Krishna’s shields were strong, but not enough to deal with the enemy’s high-powered, large-bore laser cannons. If we took a few hits from those, our shields would be gone in an instant.

“What are you doing?!” Elma demanded.

“What else can I do but fight?!”

The fastest way to take down the battleship would be to charge in and use our reactive torpedoes, but that wasn’t a good idea at this stage. However, there was a trick to fighting an overwhelming enemy force that had a large ship in their midst.

I tried to circle around to the blind spot of the enemy battleship, dodging a hail of defensive fire as I went. But it swiftly used its attitude control thrusters in an attempt to thwart my attack. Cruisers and other enemy ships tried to back it up, but they were too late.

“Aw, heck yeah!” I slipped past the bridge of the whirling battleship and used the attitude control thrusters to change direction once again. Once I was directly behind the ship in its blind spot, I stuck right to it. Now their friends would stop using strong weapons for fear of missing and hitting the battleship.

Basically, the battleship became a huge shield for me. Or a hostage, you could say. Fighting fair and square would mean being crushed in ten seconds flat, so I had to use the attackers against each other. Sure, I fought dirty, but I didn’t care. These battles weren’t honorable affairs.

A fight to the death doesn’t come with rules.

“Small ships and carriers are coming around!” Mimi announced.

“All planned for. Don’t worry.” Their only way of getting rid of me was to send other ships to fight me.

But fighting those ships was me and the Krishna’s specialty. I held on like a parasite to the battleship behind us as it tried to get away, crushing the small craft and carriers with my four heavy lasers and two flak cannons. Just like shooting fish in a barrel.

“Huh? Wh-what’s going on?” Chris asked, utterly confused by the Krishna’s movements.

“He’s using back thrusters and control thrusters to stick to the battleship while he fights. I can’t explain how, though.” Mimi told her what she could about it, sounding awfully proud for some reason.

“You still move like a weirdo,” Elma complained.

Hey, I’m not weird! I’m just using the radar and HUD at the same time to predict the enemy’s movements and controlling the thrusters to follow suit… Not that I have time to explain it now.

I began to hear enemy communications.

“H-he won’t back off! Shoot him down already!”

“What’s with those creepy movements? How can he spin like that and still stay next to the ship?!”

“Damn it! Fighter III is down! He’s stronger than we thought!”

Why were they using the shared frequency of the imperial fleet? Were they soldiers? Hey, hold on! I thought they just had shoddy security, but no! They’re soldiers! Did Chris’ uncle bribe them? Who are these people?!

The enemy continued to yell at each other.

“Argh! Are we losing?!”

“I’m in a corvette, damn it! How did a tiny ship like that get to be stronger than cruisers?!”

Having grown tired of taking so much damage from a small ship, a corvette—a medium ship, by merc standards—came flying at the Krishna. But even its shields and armor couldn’t stand up to my full power. It lost its shields almost instantly and took heavy damage to its plating and hull before limping away pitifully.

After a few minutes of us being stuck in a defensive deadlock, the Pirate-Hunting Unit finally appeared, led by the battleship Lestarius. Their flagship vessel was followed by five cruisers, three destroyers, and two corvettes. They all boomed as they warped out into regular space. Actually, does it even count as “warping” out if you’re just turning off their faster-than-light drive?

At any rate, the cavalry was here!

“Attention, all imperial ships present!” Serena’s voice boomed powerfully. “We are the imperial fleet’s own Pirate-Hunting Unit, and I am their commander, Lieutenant Commander Serena Holz! Your hostile acts flagrantly violate the imperial code! Cease fire at once and stop your engines!”

With Serena’s arrival, you’d think that silence would fall over this sector of space, but no such luck.

“Uh, Serena…? They’re not stopping at all.”

The battleship continued to spin around toward the Krishna, and the remaining small craft and carrier ships still tried desperately to peel me off of it.

“I repeat!” She yelled this time, the rage obvious in her voice. “Cease fire at once and stop your engines!!! Your actions go wildly against imperial laws and code! If you do not obey at once, then in accordance with article six, paragraph three of imperial law, I will shoot you down! Stop immediately!!!”

But they didn’t stop. Instead, they totally ignored the Pelican IV and focused all their attention on the Krishna. It was obvious what they wanted.

“Think they’ll stop?” Elma asked.

“I really doubt it.”

“Do you…?” Mimi sounded worried.

“They clearly want me,” Chris said quietly. “I don’t know what kind of connections my uncle has, or what methods he used to send them after us, but they won’t back down now.”

I couldn’t take my eyes off the battle, so I couldn’t see the look on her face, but her tone was solemn. No doubt her adorable face was clouded over with sadness. Her uncle was an awful man; that much was clear.

“Don’t worry about damaging the Westall,” the enemy declared. “Weapons free!”

“Understood. Weapons free!”

There was a shrill warning noise in the Krishna’s cockpit. At the same time, countless missiles shot from the enemy’s remaining ships.

“Weapons free” is basically an order to use all your weapons on the enemy. In other words, the guy was telling his friends to use everything they had to take down the Krishna, even if it meant hurting the battleship next to me.

“Are they insane?!” I yelled.

“Seeker missiles are coming this way!” Elma announced.

“Weapons free! Take down those deserters! Open fire!!!” Having decided that enough was enough, Serena ordered her unit to attack.

At this point, we couldn’t stick to the battleship anymore; after all, they were going to fire indiscriminately now. Hell, we’d go down before the battleship would.

“Nnnngh! Damn you!” I gave up on staying glued to the enemy, accelerating hard and plunging into the hail of missiles.

“Urk!!!”

“Eep!!!”

“Ugh!!!”

Elma, Mimi, and Chris responded with a chorus of gasps and screams. At the same time, I fired my flak cannons, destroying the heat-seeking missiles coming my way and flying straight into the resulting explosion.

“Sweet! Perfect maneuvering!” I congratulated myself.

The missiles that hadn’t been destroyed were confused the moment we plunged into the blast, flying off in different directions. Elma must have used the flares right as we went in, since several of the missiles were guided toward them. What a goddess!

But we weren’t out of danger yet. We were heading straight toward enemy ships, and they were training their large laser cannons on us in this very moment.

“Chaffs!” I demanded.

“I know!” Elma replied, already on the case.

We deployed chaffs to interfere with their laser lock-ons and took evasive maneuvers, but because we were charging in, it was impossible to avoid them completely. Alarms rang out in the cockpit, and the shields started to go pale and flicker. Military-grade ships—and cruiser-rank ones, at that—were just built differently. The Krishna’s shields couldn’t take that much punishment.

“O-our shields!” Mimi screamed.

“Don’t worry. It’s not time to panic yet.”

“You’re awfully calm!!!”

I managed to soothe Mimi while sticking to one of the enemy cruisers. At the same time, countless lasers tore through space near us. The enemy battleship must have finally turned around and trained their large-bore lasers on the Krishna.

“Okay,” I grumbled. “I’ve had my fill of thrills.”

“Just so you know, I think you’re a total idiot.”

“If that had hit us, we…” Mimi shuddered.

“It’s cool, it’s cool. All according to plan.”

Okay, so that was a big lie. Our shields were almost exhausted, so if that barrage had hit us, we would be in serious trouble. It wouldn’t destroy us outright, but we’d have taken heavy damage. Fortunately, the Krishna was equipped with high-grade plating, so it could take at least one shot from a battleship’s main cannon. Let me tell you, that shiz was expensive.

As I reminisced about the good old days of Stella Online while evading enemy fire, I realized that a volley of lasers had just hit the cruiser I was using to shield myself.

“Damn it!” Putting the pedal to the metal, I fled from the explosion. The other ships tried to shoot us down, but the Krishna was long gone: they only managed to hit their own allies. Since the enemy was focusing their main cannons on the Krishna, they had left their flanks and underbellies exposed to attack by Serena’s unit.

“One shot grazed us!” Elma informed me.

“That’s what we get for hanging out near their target.”

“They would have shot us down at the start if we hadn’t.”

The Pirate-Hunting Unit, with its newer and more plentiful vessels, took down ship after ship. Some suffered engine failure, others had their propulsion systems destroyed, and others had their upper deck—where their main weapons were installed—badly damaged.

The destroyers and corvettes already seemed to be wrecked, so only their battleship could fight at this point.

“Good grief… Guess the battle’s over, huh?”

Amidst all of this, I had hidden us behind one of the cruisers that’d lost its propulsion system. We still had to be careful, since the enemy battleship could still target us.

“Are you sure we should be hiding?” Mimi asked.

“At this stage, there’s no point in taking unnecessary risks,” I answered.

“Yep,” Elma agreed.

Only an idiot would leap out and be like, “I’m Captain Hiro, and I challenge you to single combat!” Guaranteed I’d just get shot down by their large-bore lasers.

Besides, the people who attacked us seemed to be from the imperial fleet, so it was a little too risky to attack them aside from pure self-defense. I had a friend here, sure, but she had plenty of soldiers with her. If we weren’t careful, it was totally possible that we could be arrested.

So, I kept my reactive torpedoes to myself and didn’t even attack the cruiser I was hiding behind, only shooting down the small craft that actively came for us. If Serena’s unit hadn’t been coming to help, I would have been much more aggressive. To be fair, though, the Krishna wouldn’t have made it through things unscathed. We might’ve even gotten shot down, seeing as we almost lost our shields this time.

Truly, organized space fleets were terrifying.

“I repeat, stop your engine!!!” Serena continued, utterly furious. “The battle is over! Any more sacrifices would be utterly meaningless!”

After a moment of silence, the enemy battleship stopped its engine.

“This is the vice-captain of the Westall, Lieutenant Commander Romando Kestrel,” the enemy replied. “We have stopped our engine, and we await further orders.”

“Good. Where’s your captain?”

“Captain Eugene Herasmus has committed suicide. I am now in command of this ship.”

“I see,” Serena sighed. “We’ll begin rescuing the wounded now. Prepare to receive us.”

“Aye aye.”

I have no idea how or why they sicced imperial soldiers on us, but it seemed the battle was finally over. The battleship Westall received Serena’s Lestarius, and ships from the Pirate-Hunting Unit joined the immobile enemy cruisers. From this point on, they would commandeer the enemy ships.

Suicide, though? I pondered. That’s suspicious.

“Is it over?” Mimi asked.

“Looks like it,” Elma replied. “We should still be careful, though.”

“Agreed. They might restart their engines for a surprise attack. Let’s wait and watch a bit before we go back to the Pelican IV.” With that, I grabbed my gravity sphere and sipped some well-chilled, non-carbonated soda. Ah… I can feel its sweetness spreading through my tense, tired body.

I would have preferred the carbonated stuff, but it was back in the cargo bay. I couldn’t open it up on the Krishna because of air pressure or artificial gravity or something like that. If I did, it would explode all over the ship and my crew.

“Mei, are you okay?” I asked.

“Yes. My functions are normal, and I am undamaged.”

“Awesome. The battle’s pretty much over but be ready for anything until we dock on the Pelican IV.”

“Understood.”

Now, all we had to do was wait. It wouldn’t take long for Serena to commandeer those enemy ships.