CHAPTER 72: ENGAGEMENT BEHIND A STAR PART 2

“What the hell is going on here?!” Abyssal yelled out the moment she exited the carrier.

Outside, was the chaotic sight of thousands of fighters being blown apart by a plethora of fireworks of a different colour. The entire battlefield was behind the shade of a supergiant star, which gave the place a sense of epicness, as if from a sci-fi movie. 

“It seems that the enemy fleet is engaging E at the dark side of the planet,” Kuon replied, not understanding that Abyssal was just shouting for the sake of shouting and was not looking for an answer.

“That’s Jinko’s ship, nyaa. Also, other Dawning Star cruisers!” Meica yelled out as she pointed towards the main screen where the battlefield is displayed.

“I know that! Arghh, why is it so hot!” Abyssal yelled out again. 

Abyssal felt as if she was in a sauna. Understandable as her shields weren’t as strong as the other ships in the area. Plus, her ship wasn’t really built to withstand high temperatures like the close proximity of a bloody star. She was afraid of the fact that if her shields were to break, she might be burned alive by the supergiant star.

“Don’t be such a baby. Hurry and calculate the warp coordinates,” Astral said to her. 

“I know, I know…”

Abyssal looked within the top of her consciousness, on the top right of her ‘vision’ was a timer that says: 

[Time before warp: 24 minutes.]

‘Dammit, can’t this thing calculate any slower?’

[Delay is due to the number of obstructions within the area. Immediate warp without sufficient calculation can lead to a high probability of high damage to the ship.] Abby said to Abyssal. 

‘Don’t need to be snarky here, Abby!’  Abyssal let out a sigh.

‘Still, twenty-four minutes, huh. They seem busy fighting each other over there. I hope nothing happens during this time.’ Abyssal thought to herself.

“Do you really think nothing will happen?” said Astral as if reading Abyssal’s mind.

“Huh?”

“That pink battlecruiser is after you, right? I don’t know what happened between you and that person, but she’s willing to go through pretty much everyone at Little Foot just to get to you. Do you really think she’ll just let you go for free?”

‘Yeah… She has a point.’ Abyssal thought to herself after coming to a realization.

Not too long after Astral said that, she clicked her tongue. “Damn that was fast. Speak of the devil. Get ready! We have enemies incoming.”

“Wha?!”

Abyssal looked at her radar. There were hundreds of dots representing the hundreds of fighters and the five bigger dots representing the bigger ships on the battlefield. Around Abyssal herself were nothing out of the ordinary. No dots were coming towards her direction. Just to be sure, Abyssal took a look using her high definition camera and looked around. Again, nothing.

“Don’t bother looking for them. I doubt you could see them anyways,” Astral said to Abyssal, knowing her predicament.

“...” Abyssal couldn’t find the words to respond to her. Indeed as Astral said, her radar wasn’t any good. Don’t talk about enemies, heck even Astral herself was invisible on her radar. Abyssal felt frustrated at the simple fact— that she was just leagues behind all of the other players in the area.

“Abyssal, I need you to turn starboard of your position and put maximum energy to your shields. I have a feeling that they will attempt to bypass me to get to you. Just keep going to the edge, I’ll cover you the best I can.”

 “G-got it!” Abyssal replied and immediately followed her instructions. The ship turned left and the Phoenix tailgated Abyssal from behind.

As Astral followed Abyssal, she shot out a few dozen lasers towards seemingly random locations— twelve in total. It was Astral’s point defence lasers that Abyssal had seen in action before. The laser arced and headed towards a few areas behind her before culminating in a dozen explosions. Astral didn’t just stop there as she shot out more lasers towards random areas— each laser hit something that Abyssal couldn’t see before exploding some distance away from her.

“Uwahh… even the missiles are invisible to the radar and the cameras. How disgusting…” Abyssal said as she looked closely at her camera’s trying to find the missiles to no avail. All she could see was just dead space before an explosion due to Astral’s laser hitting the missiles.

It was lucky that these weren’t the missiles that Jinko used against Abyssal during her first fight, else she would have stood no chance.

“Dawning Star new stealth missiles, nyaa. Expensive and very hard to obtain. She shouldn’t have many of them,” Meica explained the situation.

“Where are they coming from? The missiles being invisible is one thing, but the ship?” Kuon asked.

“They must be invisible too. I don’t see any other reason,” Abyssal replied.

Abyssal, having nothing else to do, only continued moving towards the farthest point of the battlefield as she could. Her goal was to gain distance between herself and the enemy fleet in the area. She monitored her screen for incoming missiles and made sure that her shields were always at max capacity. Her directional thrusters were engaged, just in case she needed to do advanced manoeuvres.

Astral, on the other hand, did her job defending Abyssal superlatively. She soared through space shooting lasers at random areas. She was most probably dogfighting against the stealth fighters that Jinko had sent after her. Though, looking at her from Abyssal’s point of view made it seem like she was a crazy person, flying around randomly and shooting at thin air. However, if one looked closely, one could see that Astral and the explosions were getting nearer and nearer to Abyssal. 

‘The enemies are inching closer...’

This string of events went on for a good 15 minutes when Abyssal finally reached the edge of the battlefield. Any further and she would be in direct rays of the star, burning her to a crisp. As she had nowhere else to go, the enemy fighters and the explosions could be seen getting to her at an increased speed.

“Oi Abyssal, what the hell are you doing?! Keep moving!” Astral yelled out when she saw that Abyssal had come to a halt.

“I’m at the edge already. If I go any further, I’ll be burned to death!” Abyssal replied.

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“God damn it. How long before warp? Just so you know, I can’t really hold them off for long. These things are damn annoying!” 

“About eight minutes!”

“Tsk, we aren’t going to make it at that rate. Screw it, I’m linking up my radar feedback with yours. I need you to charge that big gun of yours!”

As Astral said that, a plethora of information was transmitted towards Abyssal, which caused her a slight headache. It took a while for her to go through all of it, but Abyssal eventually got it done. What Astral sent was the location of every single object within a 75 000Km radius around Abyssal. Integrating the data into Abyssal’s display, one could see a red outline of where a craft should be if it wasn’t hidden from her view. Abyssal could see six other fighter ships within the area, all manoeuvring to dodge Astral’s attacks and were all trying to get into position to aim at Astral. Within the radar and her view were lots of missiles being shot down by Astral’s point defence system. Not only that, but she could also see their movement trajectory, speed, the type of armaments, and how much they have fired.

‘Woah, what the hell. This is like hacks!’ Abyssal thought to herself.

“What are you fooling around for?! Shoot at them!” 

“I need to divert a lot of power from my other components to charge my gun. I’ll probably be an easy target if I start charging.”

“Just do it! Trust me, you ain’t going to dodge these guys and your shields won’t hold against their missiles.”

“Alright,” Abyssal replied before following Astral’s orders. She diverted most of her energy from her thrusters and shields towards the main gun.

Slowly she turned her ship around and started aiming for the nearest stealth fighter in the area. As it would take her about 30 seconds to charge up a shot with her main gun, she decided to take her sweet time aiming. She linked up her mind with Abby and started calculating every possible angle that the fighter could move and the best possible location to shoot in order to land a hit.

Jinko and her fighters must have seen what Abyssal was planning to do and started to execute pre-advanced manoeuvres in order to make it harder for her to aim. 

 However, there was only so much Jinko and her fighters could do when you have the overpowered ace pilot known as Astral singling out the fighter. Astral immediately recognized the target and did her best in order to limit the movement of the one fighter ship. She did this while preventing the other ships from approaching Abyssal to launch their missiles. Not before long, 30 seconds was up and Abyssal was ready to fire her gun for the first time in her life.

“Ready, steady and… fire!” Abyssal yelled out. The entire ship rumbled as the massive battleship sized gun on the shark-class fired a large blue laser towards the stealth fighter. The width of the laser itself was almost as large as the shark-class. It was like the stronger version of one of Astral’s main weapons. The laser engulfed the fighter in its entirety and was subsequently vaporized from existence. 

It seemed the destruction of the fighter ship seemed to cause quite a disturbance among the other fighters as they stopped manoeuvring for a few moments. Astral saw this and took the chance to fire her own laser towards one of the other fighters. Unlike Abyssal who went overkill with the beam size, Astral’s beam was smaller but contained just enough power to pierce through the stealth fighter, blowing it apart.

“I… I did it!” Abyssal yelled out in excitement for the first successful fire of the gun and her second takedown in space. Her excitement died down quick when she realised something.

‘I hope that fighter is unmanned… if there is a person inside, then rest in peace…’ Abyssal muttered a small prayer in her aftermath. Given that Jinko is a core, there was a big possibility that the fighter was unmanned like the abundance of unmanned fighters that E uses. Still, there was no way to really know. For all Abyssal knew, she just killed someone.

“Round up the next shot, it’s not over yet!”

“Roger that,” Abyssal replied and began charging up the next shot.

It was unfortunate that the second shot would never come as Kuon and Meica yelled out behind Abyssal on the bridge. Something huge was happening.

“Master, the black battleship!”

“Nyaa, nyaa, what is it doing?!”

Abyssal who was confused at the situation, turned briefly to look at the battleship in the battlefield. The black battleship bore quite the resemblance to the destroyer that Abyssal fought against during the battle of Little Foot. Although different in size, Abyssal knew that inside it was the core named Sensenmann. 

Said battleship was charging full-speed towards the Abigail E. Eternity. It was doing so for the entire duration of the battle, so Abyssal didn’t really pay her any heed. But now, upon closer inspection, Abyssal could see that the battleship was too damn near to the carrier and worse, showed no signs of stopping at all.

As a matter of fact, the battleship was moving even faster towards the carrier. It crashed through the spherical defences of all the escort fighters before crashing onto the carrier. A large explosion happened as shrapnels of metal was sent flying everywhere. The carrier slanted in its trajectory as the battleship kept its thrusters to the max, pushing the Abigail E. Eternity. At the rate that it's going, it would be pushed out of the dark side within the hour.

“Abyssal, how long till warp?” Astral asked, breaking Abyssal’s concentration of the event.

Abyssal glanced towards the upper right corner of her consciousness before replying: “Two minutes left.”

“Good. I want you to warp immediately once the calculations are done.”

“Eh? What about E?”

“She can handle herself. Prioritise yourself first,” Astral said before cutting off communications.

At the distance, Abyssal could see that the remaining of Jinko’s stealth fighters were retreating from the area— three in total. Astral must have destroyed another one while Abyssal was preoccupied with the crash.

* * * * *

“What the, Sensenmann just!” Hikari yelled out. Her mouth was open wide with her left palm covering it. 

“Perhaps a loss of control? The Reaper was under heavy fire,” Yoake asked.

“No, that can’t be. There is no way a ship like that could lose control of its thrusters from small attacks like that. Not within such a short timeframe.”

“Hmm? Enemy fighters are pulling back. Reason: unknown.”

True to Yoake’s words, the fighter swarm around them started dispersing and retreated back to the carrier. Not all of them though as some remained to keep the Dawning Star ships occupied— just enough to be a threat that they could not break their diamond formation, nor spare any firepower to divert their main guns.

“I wonder what’s going on…”

“The Reaper rammed the carrier in a suicide attack,” Jinko said as she opened her eyes. She could be seen clenching her left abdomen and had a slightly pained expression on her face.

Hikari was a little shocked by Jinko’s sudden response but quickly calmed herself down. “A suicide attack? Why would she?”

“Think about it, it was the biggest projectile she had. Big enough to pierce through its defences and do actual damage to the carrier. It’s also an easy way to board the enemy. I can see the merits to doing so.”

“Action, ineffective. By doing such a move, one is unable to guarantee survival. Incomprehensible,” Yoake said out.

“I don’t think she is looking to survive,” Jinko said before sipping a cup of tea, her throat feeling a little dry. 

“She had such devotion to completing her task, that one. She cares more about completing her mission than her own life. What insanity,” Jinko continued.

“That’s just…”

“Hikari, Yoake. Prepare your warp drives. We are leaving.”

“Now? What about the blue core and the heir? They haven’t warped out yet, haven’t they? We can still activate the F.T.L. inhibitor,” Hikari asked.

“The new stealth fighters proved ineffective against them. The red chicken is much more capable than I first thought, not even the state of the art stealth technology helped against that fighter. Even if we deployed the Inhibitor, there isn’t any way for us to get over to that side without passing through thousands of fighters.  Deploying the inhibitor would only show our hand unnecessarily.”

“And of The Reaper? Are we to leave her alone?” Yoake asked next.

“We are here for the heir, not the destruction of the carrier,” Jinko said before looking towards Sensenmann. Her battleship now stuck on the carrier’s hull like a splinter. “Besides, I think we’ve already upheld our end of the bargain. There is nothing more we can do in this situation.”

“Understood. Beginning warping procedures,” Yoake said out. Hikari nodded as well and began to engage her warp drives.

And with that, Jinko also engaged her warp drives. Within the next minute, Jinko, Hikari and Yoake disappeared from the battle.

The last thing that Jinko saw was Sensenman’s ship drilling itself deeper into the Abigail E. Eternity and the sight of the blue shark warping out alongside the red chicken.

‘That is the third time she’s escaped from me. What a shame. Have I gotten too lenient over the years?’ Jinko thought to herself.