Chapter 1
Seto's Melancholy
The bridge of the Mikagami was enveloped by a tension the likes of which it hadn't seen for a long while.
In fact the only time that came close was when it they first encountered seina.
"There's no mistaking it, That's the enemy! Target that fleet!"
The pirate fleet which was reflected on the monitor in front of them was the secret experiment fleet of the Daruma Guild.
It was a mysterious fleet that caused Seina to be recalled suddenly due to a lack of information about it, and above all due to the amount of damage it had done.
"heehehehe"Seto's smile was that of a carnivorous beast who had found its prey.
The feed image was coming from a spy eye, a small unmanned ship that they had sent out to search for the fleet. The pirate fleet was taking the contents of a container from a GP shipping vessel.
Because Seto's fleet was originally established for information gathering, the stealth technology she had was Jurai's best. In spite of this, the pirate Fleet had begun leaving the area as if they knew they had been spotted.
"All ships full speed! There's no need to capture them! destroy everything!"
Seto said in a frustrated voice.
All the troops jumped a short distance towards the enemy fleet all at once to attack, at the same time the pirates began preparations to jump away
even though they had begun preparing to flee they hadn't jumped yet.
Seto's attack hit one of the ships
"We hit one ship! It is a direct hit!"
The next moment the rear part of the enemy ship was unusually inflated, and beams of light blew out like sparkling fireworks in all directions.
"Huh??…… An explosion!?"
"Stop all fire! Stop the assault!!"
Seto shouted however it had already been launched, after a short distance jump it came in front of the Space Pirate fleet.
"Emergency evasion order!"
Seto shouted, the fire that came from the rear of the enemy ship bent and scattered in an unlikely orbit.
Even more strange things continued to happen.
"The enemy fleet is firing simultaneously into the middle of the explosion!"
"What's that Mikagami!?"
Seto asked, the Mikagami made an emergency jump into hyper space as if she knew something they didn't. It was such a short jump that it seemed like they had teleported just out of range. but it was a brute force jump,and it caused the ship to quake as it quickly entered and left hyperspace. The rest of the Juraian fleet didn't move though.
The pirate's shots concentrated in the center of the bombardment and shot out orders of magnitude stronger then an attack from a juraian ship and the blast spread out like thunder. Luckily the Mikagami had deployed a shield covering almost the entire airspace to protect the GP ships from the torrent of energy.
"Where did the enemy fleet go !?"
"They're Undetectable! Our detection systems are down."
"Fuck they got away!" Seto slammed her fist into her armrest.
The torrent of energy lasted a bit over 10 seconds, and gradually dispersed. Within less than a minute normal communication and detection systems recovered, but as expected by Seto there were no pirates to be found."
"Any idea's where they went?" Seto asked calmly.
"No info has reached any information network yet."
"Fine then... lets try to calculate the escape route of the enemy! Narrow it down to the three most likely candidates from that and let's immediately leave to pursue them! Please ask the GP for their cooperation!"
"Roger that!"
"... ...Ugh... What is the damage situation?" Seto asked Minaho while sighing.
"The GP's shipping vessel is fine the damage from this battle was minor and there were no human injuries. most of our ships avoided quickly though most also suffered some kind of damage, five are wrecked, all the crew members are fine though ...... even so we're lucky. "
Minaho bitterly smiled at Seto. If Seto's movements hadn't alerted them, it would have been impossible for the rest of the fleet to deal with the torrent of energy that came at them.
"What the heck was that blast anyways?"Seto asked
"Well we've analysed the cause of the energy earlier and we know what caused it."
"And?"Seto said impatiently
"As a result of recovering a sample of the debris, it turned out that it was filled with pieces of KZM ingots that were being transported on the GP shipping vessle,
" KZM, that stuff used for plating the inside of reactor cores and turrets?"
"We made a direct hit right into the container of it that the enemy ship had taken"
"Really? And yet the enemy ship didn't sink... hmmm"
"I can hardly believe it either ..."
The diffused reflection of energy caused by shooting KZM wasn't a thing that could be controlled. The enemy pirates should have been harmed too. Despite this, they were able to escape without loosing even a single ship.
"It's not just me right? ... ... ... ... This is ridiculous ... ... you know what this reminds me of?"
Seto said leaning deeply in her chair while exhaling a big sigh.
"What?"
"... ... When we first met seina"
"............"
Minaho, who realized the meaning, took big sigh as well as Seto looked at the situation on the monitor. on the monitor the fleet had split into three sections start jumping.
-----------end of chapter-----------