Distances in space were truly vast. Even inside the solar systems. Because of this, even though we were ready for action at a mont’s notice, nothing happened for hours upon hours.
It seed that this was another advantage of having AIs running most of the ship. We humans—even though I could barely be called that—well, we needed breaks.
“I’m heading off to sleep. It should be the best ti for it. Lola, I want you to finish calibrating the second lure device. It might be useful.”
“Understood, captain, but it will take so ti as the second device isn’t 100% finished.”
“If you need help, just tell .” She gave a nod. My bed wasn’t too far away, and as soon as my head hit the pillow, I was asleep.
No alarm woke up; I had gotten my required three hours of sleep. It was nice having to sleep less as we got stronger. Speaking of getting stronger, my mind looked towards FH’s core.
Because of the rebirth of my crew mbers, we were now connected in our gaining of strength. Each ti sothing was killed near us, the power one of us would have gained was now split between all of us; it was like being in a party.
The problem with that was that FH needed so much more of it than we did, and she got a lot more each ti we killed sothing. A negative of hunting space monsters is that if they’re far enough away, we get less of that added strength.
Still, with the way her core was shining to , she was getting quite close to her first rank-up. This was going to be significant in many ways. If she followed the sa progression as us, every part of her should get stronger and better, but what exactly that ant in the context of her being a ship, that I wasn’t entirely sure about.
Whatever the case, it should significantly boost our survivability and attack power, at least I hope. It would be nice if others continued to underestimate us. This would be our biggest advantage.
Eventually, we would probably need an even bigger ship, but that was most likely in the far future, especially thanks to inventory skills.
We were now even slowing down, thanks to the enemy fleet also having slowed down enough that catching us was no longer viable for them, at least not if we approached closer.
Instead of heading to the command centre, I decided to do my daily ditation and centering of myself, even though I had missed quite a few days because of all the things going on.
When I finally made it to the command centre, we still had a few hours to wait before we could execute our next phase. The rest of my crew mbers were all busy at their stations, most looking through FH’s database.
A quick glance showed that our current data storage was about 80% full. We most definitely needed to go to a place where we could actually purchase stuff after we left here. The seed technology had potential, but it would take a while to reach that stage, and I certainly didn’t want us to run out of space to store data.
I watched as the enemy fleet was now at the correct speed to start approaching the trail of space monster corpses we left behind. It would still take them a bit of ti to approach, but—
“I think it’s ti to start the next phase.”
“Acknowledged,” FH responded, and the AIs started to control the ship, accelerating us towards the next biggest cluster of space monsters.
It didn’t take too long after that for us to be contacted by the enemy fleet. We were too far away for video connection, so they sent us ssages instead.
“Good, run along.”
It was a taunting ssage, but most of what they sent was viruses. We handled them easily enough.
“It seems that they want to play gas. FH, you know what to do?”
I typed up my own ssage: “Collect those scraps as fast as you can. There’s a fleet heading this way. If you don’t hurry with getting those scraps, you might lose it all.”
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
I was not expecting much, but to my surprise, on the tactical screen, we saw many of the ships having engine problems for a bit.
“Looks like our viruses managed to do more than theirs did to us.” FH seed especially proud that we actually managed to ss with their ships with our viruses.
“How are their internal defences so weak?” Dean asked, but I didn’t have to explain, as in just under a minute, all the enemy ships were fully operational once again. “Oh, so no crippling or long-term damage, just montary interruption?”
“Exactly. Everything is quite hardened against long-term damage. The systems are too robust most of the ti. But it’s good to see that our idea of overloading internal communications between ship parts seed to work.”
The retaliation started, but it didn’t amount to anything. Our E-war defences were way too strong, especially at this distance.
“FH, send the commander to activate the lure device.”
Since we were bombarding the entire system with our sensors, it was easy enough to sneak that command so the enemy fleet wouldn’t notice. Especially because we also didn’t stop our E-war against them, although now our attempts were barely doing anything.
The lure device didn’t show up on any of our regular sensors, and even using the mana detection device, it wasn’t exactly noticeable unless we were specifically looking for that magic signature.
We were waiting to see if the pirates would notice what was basically underneath their nose, but none of them seed to be doing anything else but moving towards corpses and starting to harvest expensive parts.
There was one change, and that was the space monsters. It took them a bit, but in less than ten minutes, all of them were now moving towards that lure device.
“Well done, Lola. It seems that you managed to make it seem like there’s a truly delicious al for them just waiting to be eaten.”
“Space monsters seem quite instinct-driven, but I’m guessing it would not work so well with every different kind of space monster.”
It took the enemy fleets longer to notice the change than I expected, which was a good thing. A smile ca to my face as we watched the communication between their ships spike for nearly thirty minutes before it slowed down without them moving away.
“Greed can be quite the downfall,” Bob said while half-chuckling.
He was right in that, because with every passing minute, their chances of survival dropped. If they waited too long, there was no escaping what ca for them, at least not for all of the fleet.
“Slow us down. Now we’re keeping the space monsters just at the edge of them being able to catch us. We need to make them think for as long as possible that the space monsters are after us.”
“Captain, we have contact.”
The tactical screen changed to show an additional ship. It was a small one, only 30 tres in length, but that was all that we were getting. Even now, its capability to hide from us was beyond impressive.
More and more of our sensors focused on that area, and we started to get a picture of where it was moving. It seed that it was on an intercept course with us. It didn’t seem that it had weapons, so why was it approaching?
No matter what it planned, us locating it spooked whoever was flying that ship. We watched, quite frankly, in shock, as it turned away from its current trajectory and started accelerating. It did so gradually, but eventually it was nearing 80G, which was crazy.
It was already moving at a decent speed, so it only took it forty minutes to jump into FTL. During this ti, it was obvious that whoever was the captain of that ship had been working with the pirates, but they weren’t actually part of those pirates, just doing a job.
Those pirate captains certainly weren’t happy that he was ditching them. It was quite funny to watch them be so mad at him, and even better than that, they were barely paying attention to the space monsters that were getting closer and closer. One of the cluster’s trajectories was now quite obviously not our ship.
“If they die now, can you even call it our fault?” Bob asked as another half an hour had passed without the pirates packing up and leaving.
“Captain, the drone has successfully attached itself to one of the pirate ships.”
So even that part of the plan worked. “Did they really not notice it?”
“No, captain, it seems that they did not.”
With a smile on my face, we just waited until we actually needed to start changing our own course; otherwise, the space monsters might get too close to us and decide to attack. When we started sideways burning, the pirates finally noticed that sothing was wrong.
The panic of the individual ships made it so that the pirate captains needed to spend extra ti getting everyone back in line. They had only harvested about one-third of the valuable materials, if that.
They took so extra ti to pack everything up, which was the last nail in their coffin. They must have assud that the space monsters were coming to feast on their dead brethren.
All this ti, there was a simple number constantly ticking upwards. It was displaying how many G of acceleration the pirate ships would need to escape the approaching space monsters.
At the start, when the space monsters began to move, that number was barely 5. Now it was 26.5 and climbing. Both fleets accelerated to 15G.
We held our breath, and soon our sensors brought us the good news of the space monsters changing direction, moving to cut off the escaping pirates.
“What have you done?” was one of the ssages FH displayed to us, sent by one of the pirate captains. They wanted to know what we did, but we simply didn’t answer back.
The ships started to accelerate more, but most were quite standard, so 15G was already near their max. The tactical screen showed how so of the ships started to accelerate more, with the two flagships reaching a little past 24G of acceleration.
That would not be enough to escape, but the space monsters weren’t actually after them, as they were still going after the main bulk of the fleet where the lure device is.
“They will soon try to scatter, as panic will take over,” Dean said while pointing out that so of the ships were already deviating from their current trajectory.
“They will soon figure out that the space monsters would only be going after one ship.”
Lola’s analysis was most likely correct. That would not be exactly what I was after, as that would an 99% of those pirate ships would be able to escape. The space monsters were pretty close to the pirates. It would only take them an hour to reach their target.
“FH, send a command for the lure device to be turned off.” There was a pause in the command centre as everyone processed what I said.
“Oh, please let it work,” Bob and Sam said in unison.
In two minutes, we had our answer. The space monsters stopped accelerating for a mont, but then they seed angry, and each one of them picked a target that was close by, which were the pirate ships.
“Oh, they’re all dead,” Sam said, echoing everyone’s thoughts.
“FH, transmit for the drone to separate from the ship. That way, perhaps we can save it.”
What followed in the next two hours was absolute devastation. It was actually kind of hard to watch. The fleet scattered, but it didn’t matter, as the ships were caught even if they tried to fight off the incoming space monsters. They were then torn apart.
“Lola, activate our lure device, otherwise there will be nothing left to salvage from those ships.”
“Captain, that would an that a few ships will escape.” FH was right, as so of the ships were lucky, as none of the space monsters had targeted them at the start.
“If they all died, then who would spread the story of what happened here?”
When the lure device was activated, it took the space monsters a bit to figure out that sothing tasty had appeared once again. Only three ships managed to escape, one of them a bit damaged. They should be out of the system in a day or two.
User Comments
0 comments from readers