“To be in a calculated dance is the best a ship captain can hope for in battle. But sometimes, the truth of naval and space warfare would reach even the most cunning commanders. The inevitable burning slog of close-quarters combat—both in the crashing waves of the high seas, or the orbit of a planetary body, would be something one ought to be prepared for.”

- Commodore Henry Pascual, 86th Cycle, excerpt from “Pirates and Communards: Substandard Fleets and Suicidal Tactics of the Sector’s New Terror Groups.”

+++ Jonathan Jones +++

Jahellios System

New Krakow

FS Zoeker

“Brace for impact!” Harold shouted over his lungs as he fired his SMG downrange at the incoming hostile ship.

The sound of alarms was so loud, that one of their patrol boats finally rammed itself at us. Due to engine damage, the enemy patrol ship was too slow to really impact us badly. It was more of a limping mess by the time it rammed us, but still, the sound of metal screeching grated my ears, as their ship fired off multiple grappling hooks at us.

The heck? They even bought something like that. We fired at them, as their ship turned its side to us. It seemed that fear had completely been gone in their eyes, as they began pulling out these ridiculous portable ladders that extended itself to the decks of our ship. The damned bastards must have prepared for this scenario already.

It’s like we’re back in the age before space warfare! Harold began organizing most of his men to respond to it, as groups of enemy gunmen finally began pouring in through the ladders. Like some dirty horde, they were going down like ants as they attempted to board us under heavy fire. I joined in on the turkey shoot, popping burst after burst as they tried to cross it desperately.

At least, until multiple machine gun bursts forced most of us to duck down into cover. I cursed at them, as I noticed that the bastards were getting through! Suppressing us to get an opening. These were some classic military tactics. I suppose these bunch were trained in some way. Well, I wouldn’t be surprised, they seemed well-equipped, even when they were dying in droves.

One, two, three, four. Shit, I’m out. I rolled back into cover. That was four of them shot down by my own gun. No idea how they were doing, they were bleeding badly on the deck of the Zoeker. I slammed another magazine on my gun, as I returned fire at them again.

“Jonathan! Get out of here!” I heard someone shout from behind. It was Juliett. She was firing bursts from her SMG as if covering me. “We’re falling back! There’s no way we can last here!”

I obliged and ran back toward her. I noticed something, however…that something small slammed on the deck behind me as I climbed up a small staircase. I rushed upward, straight into the covered position that Juliett occupied as best as I could until she jumped at me and pushed me down onto the floor hard.

The blast left a painful white noise in my ears. Everything was drowned out, and I couldn’t tell what was happening. I closed my eyes, trying to hold the pain as I felt as if my ears had burst open or something. Eventually, the faint popping noises appeared, alongside the shouts, before I could hear the sounds of combat once more.

“Jonathan! Jonathan! Are you alright?” Juliett frantically shouted from behind me. She then turned me around, and I was just looking at her while almost hyperventilating. She kept shouting, shaking me, yet I could not respond, too frozen to react.

“I…” I couldn’t get it out. “I…I’m…”

“Jonathan?”

“I don’t want to die…” I said. “I…Juliett…”

I couldn’t believe I said that to her. I couldn’t believe I was even saying that. Yet that was what my mouth said. Fear…it was rushing through my veins, washing through my sense of rationality. I was…in all honesty, pretty damned terrified. I had almost just died there and there.

In all my battles. In all my fights, I scarcely remembered fear. When I was in Lubola, or in Escuardo, I fought with an almost suicidal streak. As if nothing mattered. As if I had nothing to fear for if I died. This time, however…I didn’t understand.

I didn’t want to lose something. What? What did I have to lose?

Why was I afraid now? What would I lose?

What had I gained that I now fear losing something?

I had no answer…all I could say, in the most unexpected way…I really felt like I pissed my pants at this moment, metaphorically speaking.

Her face softened, however, something which I also didn’t expect.

“Jonathan, don’t worry,” she said. “No one. No one is dying tonight. I’ll make sure of that.”

I didn’t have a reply, merely nodding to her in response, as I picked myself up. Juliett herself helped me up, grabbing my hands and pulling me up. I staggered forward, before getting a sense of the situation. They’re boarding us on all sides. Both on our port side and starboard side, their burning patrol boats already hugged us, almost as if they wanted to drag the Zoeker straight to the depths of New Krakow’s gigantic ocean.

On the other hand, their corvette was still trailing us on our starboard side, firing everything it had on us. I looked straight at it, as it was also almost limping, heavily damaged by our still active 76 mm gun and the unknown vessel that was now circling us, firing at it incessantly. They’re still going to ram us. I didn’t understand this sheer desire to just sink us.

It was as if they were nothing but the undead attempting to drag the living to the grave. Quite frankly, the entire area around us was now lit up badly, even the Zoeker was now on fire, already listing on its starboard side ever so slightly, completely dead in the water. The fiery storm, the smell of fire, the lightning strikes around us, all as both the extremely fast winds raged…all while all seven vessels sank and burned together.

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This…was just supposed to be a rescue mission. I almost laughed at it all. This was all just supposed to be a rescue mission for a few thousand SCs.

How did it come to this?

“Jonathan…” Juliett patted my back. I looked back at her. “The Jukebox will be delayed. Enemy air patrols are on high alert. I…I’m gonna have to wait for a while to sneak it. I can’t…even SYS can’t find a route that would get them here faster.”

“Then that means we’d have to hold longer then?”

She gave me a brief nod. I suppose this is it then. I checked the amount of magazines that I had left. Last three. There could be no more wasting of any bullet. Of any effort. We’d have to fight back…at all costs, as best as we could.

Steel yourself then. Stamp it out, as you’ve always done.

And like that, I felt that familiar coldness return. Lose something? Fear? For now…it had no place. Not if I wanted my new friends to survive. Not if I wanted to survive. Not that that part matters.

“Juliett…would you cover me? Let’s try to stop them. From boarding our ship.”

She smirked.

“Of course, if you would do the same for me. I need someone to cover me as well, after all.” She offered her gloved hand to me. “Let’s dance?”

“What?”

“Through the bullets and the storm?” Oh…so that was what she meant. I suppose, from Lubola to Escuardo…she’d been a good partner already. I took her hand and shook it firmly.

“We’ve already been dancing in the void for a while together. I wonder how you would ‘dance’ here, tin can. Sure, let’s dance.”

“Wiped that fear off your face, huh, jerkface? Well…let’s do it then.”

+++

+++ Harold Percival +++

“Well, shite,” Weapon’s Officer Joachim Rosenfurt said to me, holding his bleeding shoulder, all while wincing. I suppose dragging most of my men here wasn’t the brightest idea, but damn it, they were all up for helping the same two people who helped us in Escuardo that I didn’t even have a chance to say that it was optional. “Seems like the bastards got us then.”

He dragged himself to fire off his pistol seven times at the enemy, before dropping back into cover with me. I placed another magazine on my SMG, before looking at him. “So, Joachim, what do you think about this?”

He looked up at the raging rain. “Well, it’s quite wet, if you ask me. Quite new, considering how used we all are to the vacuum of space. It’s rarely this wet up there.”

“Heh, I guess,” I laughed at him, before standing up and firing back at them. Most of my men had already scattered into groups of two, defending crucial sites of the ship’s deck. Just above us, one of the machine guns had been firing incessantly, operated by a janitor in the Rearguard.

Two of my men passed the both of us, tossing a flashbang at the enemy, ducking, before raining rifle fire at them afterward once it already exploded. Indeed, I trained them to the standards of the Von Wicht Gang well. “Oi, you two! Careful, you’d slip yourselves on the wet decks!” Joachim jokingly warned at them, as they passed both of us, pushing back the enemy back.

“Shut up, Joachim. Just keep bleeding down there!” One of them joked as he disappeared through the smoke and chaos. “We’ll take care of this!” He added further, almost taunting my weapon’s officer.

“What the hell did you just say?!” Joachim shouted, before pulling out his pistol, and firing it again at the ladders as two men tried to cross it. “Eat that, dipshits!” I decided to pull him back to cover. “Oi, what are you—”

“Shut up and patch yourself up, you’re going to die at this rate,” I warned, before aiming my SMG at the enemy ship. I felt him grab on me before I could pull the trigger, however. I looked back. “What?”

“Captain, you know I can still fight.”

“I know you do, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t patch yourself up. Now shut up and stay there,” I stood up, rushing into the action, all while firing my SMG in their general direction to suppress them. That was when I saw it, a slight flash, almost in a blink of an eye beside me. Louise jumped in front of me, now with a glowing pink sword in her hand.

In fact, she was glowing pink, as she slashed and danced through the groups of enemy criminals. I couldn’t fathom what the hell I was seeing, though I just chalked it up as another ability that the Fed-System must have granted her. Damn, I guess this is why System Arts is shrouded in mystery. I laughed. Tell anyone that this exists and they’d deny it at all costs!

I followed Louise through the breach that she was creating. She was even firing pink bolts from her sword…nay, it wasn’t even a sword, I think. Perhaps it was her wand. Did she turn it into a damned sword wand? Fuck, this is unfair. The Fed-System designated me as a Spacefarer, with a negative seventy-five debuff on experience gain for some reason, which meant that not only did I have no access to System Arts, but I couldn’t even gain any meaningful skills to help the Rearguard fight better.

In other words, I was effectively a neutered user of the Fed-System, much like the majority of spacefarers. I wondered briefly if Jonathan was the same. I had never asked him about it yet. That just means I’d have to rely on my own skills and brain, just like everyone else.

Louise stopped, standing over the massacre she had created, as I caught up to her. She turned to me, stupidly, as there was a criminal that appeared just behind her. In lightspeed, I had blasted its head with a well-placed bullet from my SMG, with the bullet passing just over her shoulder, through her pink hair even.

She turned back to the dead criminal, before sighing to herself.

“That…was close.”

“Got too overconfident there, missy?”

She scoffed at me. “Shut up. You and your men couldn’t even keep up.” She approached me. “We’ve almost cleared them. Now, I need all of you to—” Her eyes suddenly widened, and she looked again behind her shoulder. I too looked at the seas, realizing that their corvette had finally limped straight at us, being merely a few dozen meters away. Multiple grappling hooks flew straight to the Zoeker’s decks, as their ship began pulling itself toward us.

“System Arts user,” I heard Louise mutter, looking at a man who was posing like a maniac on that ship’s prow. That was when I realized something. His eyes…it was glowing yellow. “That man…he’s capable of doing System Arts.”

Her frown hardened, as I focused myself at him. He was smirking at us demonically before he let off a loud snarl.

“Is that you, the daughter of the Duke himself?!” He pulled out a glowing stick from his pocket. “You! You brat! You sank everything I had. But you’re dead! You’re all dead! We’ll all die in the eye of this storm, together!”

“He’s talking crazy,” I said, before giving my men the gesture to fire off their rifles in his direction. Multiple bursts of lead rained on him, but a strange forcefield blocked it. His smirk grew. “Crap…that didn’t seem to work.”

“Of course,” Louise said. “Not until we drained his Activation Points.”

“Well, well…” His smirk grew further. Who the hell chose a lunatic to chase us? “I believe it’s my turn now!”

“Everyone! Get down!”