I stretched my arms over my head, trying to get rid of the soreness from sitting still for so long.

Checking the map again for the umpteenth time, I frowned when I saw no ships showing up on my scanners.

I thought this quest would be a simple ‘go over there, shoot things, get reward’ type of thing…

But that was evidently not the case since Amber had instructed me to hide inside a field of debris and switch off my engines before we settled in to wait.

Yeah… We’re apparently just waiting here to see if pirates showed up and we would change locations after two hours if they don’t.

Speaking of which… It’s almost two hours and nothing has happened.

I couldn’t even chat with Amber since our comms might be picked up and that would tip the pirates off about our ambush.

The good thing was that I managed to do a thorough check of my ship in the meantime.

I realised that this ship’s interior was different from how I remembered it to be. The first difference was that there were actual living quarters inside the ship.

I’m talking about a living room, dining room and two bedrooms with their own attached bathrooms. One of the bedrooms was equipped with bunk beds to accommodate two people while the other one had a single bed that I presume was meant to be the captain’s quarters.

Since there were no sleep or hunger metres in the game, I guess such accommodations were unneeded in the ship but it’s now a necessity here.

My ship’s armaments were also quite substantial unlike the game’s.

The main gun was a long range photon laser mounted under the nose of the cockpit. It required a second to charge up but could deliver quite a punch even from far range away.

Right on top of the cockpit was a short range ballistic cannon that could deliver quite devastating amounts of damage at close ranges but was pretty useless at long range.

On each side of the wing was a medium range energy blaster and then mounted on the top of the main body was a medium range ballistic turret that can be both controlled manually or set on automatic fire. The turret itself can also function as an anti-missile point defence system too.

In other words, this ship is pretty decked out.

I leaned back in my chair and looked out of the window, specifically in the direction of where Amber’s ship was floating in the middle of a few broken ship parts, the fate of those ambushed merchant vessels no doubt.

Her ship was red in colour and I have a feeling she had decided to just live with her ‘ember’ theme and even doubled down on it.

Her ship was about half the size of mine and while it was not as well armed, it was faster and more agile than mine was.

We actually make a pretty decent combo I would say. I could be the tank and heavy hitter while she would be the harasser looking for targets of opportunity and keeping the more agile enemies off my back.

I was just about to open comms with her to ask if we should change locations when a beep came from my console, indicating the appearance of several high energy readings.

I immediately went on high alert and brought up the scanners, my lips curling up into a smile when I saw that the scans returned to show that their affiliations were unknown.

That means those were pirate ships.

I counted three small corvettes and two medium sized corvettes with the smaller ships leading the way.

They shifted their route and started heading towards the debris field we were hiding in, no doubt also attempting to hide in this field to wait for potential targets.

As I had planned with Amber earlier, I slowly rotated my ship to line up my main gun with one of the medium sized corvettes.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

With any luck, I might be able to take out both corvettes at this range while Amber ambushes the smaller ships to take the entire group out.

Ok… Slowly… Very slowly…

My targeting systems gave a loud beep, signalling that my photon laser was lined up with my target.

I fired up my generators and diverted the maximum power possible to my guns, this should be causing the pirates’ cockpits to start sounding out warning beeps about an energy spike in their vicinity.

Too late for my target as I fired my laser.

An orange beam of light shot out from my main gun, piercing through the ship’s hull and leaving a large, gaping hole in its side.

I could see from here that the lights in the ship died out, a clear indication that its life support systems went offline.

They had not expected an attack so they didn’t even have their shields activated.

The pirates panicked and broke formation, most likely thinking that a loose formation would make them harder to hit.

Unfortunately for them, that played directly into what Amber wanted as she shot out from her hiding spot, her ship flying straight towards the pirate ship furthest from the rest.

Her ship was a red streak in the void of space, flashing past the pirate ship right before her target exploded in a ball of fire.

I pulled my trigger again, my main weapon charging up before firing at the second medium sized corvette.

Unfortunately, this one managed to raise its shields in time and my laser crashed against its shield, causing a translucent screen to crackle and fizzle upon taking the hit.

I diverted power to the rest of my ship systems, my thrusters coming to life as I boosted out of my hiding spot to move closer to my target.

In the meantime, Amber had already turned her ship around and dived towards a second pirate corvette. Her victim was barely able to turn towards her before she flew past, its fate similar to the first one she attacked as it exploded.

The medium sized corvette spotted me and tried to get closer to bring its guns to bear, most likely thinking that I would be an easier target at close ranges.

My photon laser fired again, this time completely shattering their shields and leaving them defenceless.

Whoever was captaining that ship must have been quite indecisive since they immediately turned the ship around and tried to flee the moment the shield went offline.

Naturally, I wasn’t going to let it get away so I activated the boosters to chase after it.

The fact that I managed to catch up to them must really be making them panic because the ship suddenly swerved away, as though hoping that might throw me off their tail.

I felt no remorse in activating my energy blasters, blowing holes in their hull before one of my projectiles caused their engine to explode, consuming the rest of the ship in its fiery embrace.

With my targets neutralised, I turned to see if Amber needed any backup.

The last pirate was fighting for his life as he tried to chase Amber down while firing his blasters at her desperately.

Amber dodged and zigzagged through the hail of bullets easily before flipping her ship up and around to fly straight towards the pirate.

There was a flash of orange before she flew past, causing the pirate ship to be consumed in an explosion just like the first two.

“Damn… You’re pretty good,” I complimented her over the comms.

“You’re not bad either. I was afraid that you might freeze up in a real fight. Guess my eyes did not fail me, huh? Don’t suppose you know the manufacturer of your ship?”

“Ah… Unfortunately not.”

“Pity. Really envious specs I would say. Does your ship have a shower?”

“Err… Yes?”

“God damn I’m jealous. My ship’s too small to fit a shower so on long hauls I have to make do with simple scrub downs, otherwise I can only shower when I’m back at the station. You have it good.”

“I guess… So is that quest complete?”

“Yeah, pretty much. Unless you want to sift through the debris to find something useful?”

“Isn’t that the norm around here? Why wouldn’t you actually look through the debris?”

She scoffed, “Most pirates don’t really carry anything valuable when they are preparing for a raid like this. It would be a different case if we caught them after they had ambushed a merchant fleet. You’re welcome to do it but don’t be disappointed if you find nothing worthy of note.”

“Well… It’s not like we’re in a rush for time right? You did anticipate that we might need to change our location at least twice before meeting some pirates.”

“Suit yourself. I’ll just let you know that I don’t have any scavenger drones so I don’t have anything that could help with that.”

“Err… Scavenger drones?”

I could hear her frown from behind the comms, “Your ship has scavenger drones right? Check your loading bay controls.”

I tapped on the screen and sure enough, there was a section that was labelled “Scavenger Drones: Status Inactive”

Tapping on that switched the status to “Active” and little drones flew out from my ship and began sifting through the debris.

Oh cool, I can even direct them to prioritise what materials to look for. This is cool~

I guess this is my first quest complete then? Yay~