“Uh, you alright girl…?”

“I- I"m f- f- fine sir…”

“Looks like it"s no good huh.”

Did I just say it was time for battle earlier? That"s kinda not the case. Not yet anyway. There was still an hour left until we sortie. I had the onboard AI do a routine maintenance check on the entire ship and went to the dining area with Mimi in order to try and relax a bit before the big battle, but it isn"t going so well, apparently.

“T- T- The- There"s absolutely no p- problem y"know.”

“It really doesn"t look like that"s the case though.”

It kinda felt awkward to see Mimi fretting about like a newborn fawn or chihuahua. Well, we"re diving headfirst into a dangerous, life-threatening battle soon, so I guess being nervous and terrified like her would normally be how most folks would react. Mimi"s current state is understandable.

On the contrary, I seem to be the abnormal one for not feeling the least bit nervous or afraid. Later on I"d surely be taking a lot of lives. It"s a bit unsettling that I feel practically nothing from the prospect of partic.i.p.ating in a dangerous battle where there was a real danger of dying.

But why am I not nervous or pressured anyway? There"s a few factors I"m considering to be the reasons for this.

One major reason should be because, based on my research, I"ve surmised that my trusty ship, Krishna, was of a different league altogether compared with the ships of most other mercs and possessed uncommonly high combat capabilities.

I managed to come to this conclusion after reviewing the performance specs of other ships out on the market along with the overall firepower of their weapons, the latest weapons and equipment issued to the military and compiling various other data about this world"s standard warships.

Of course, the latest military warships employed by the Graccan Empire and the Vereverem Federation were of entirely different size cla.s.ses. But even so, I surmised that we still had a fair chance of matching them in battle.

The other factors I considered were my performance against the pirates I fought soon after being transported to this world and the shocked reactions of the receptionist uncle and Elma after watching my mock battles via the simulator. Judging from their reactions, I surmised that my piloting ability using the Krishna was somewhat out of the norm and unexpected. Of course, a major factor for my performance can be attributed to Krishna"s considerably high specs. However, no matter how high ones ship"s specs were, if you couldn"t pilot it properly, then it would just be a fancy moving coffin. At the very least, my piloting skills could ensure that Krishna won"t end up being an aforementioned moving coffin.

Considering all these, I concluded that this upcoming pirate subjugation mission won"t pose that much of a threat to us. I ended up thinking as such. So I managed to remain cool as a cuc.u.mber as a result. Or maybe I was simply just a born daredevil who didn"t feel much when faced with this sort of dangerous stuff.            

Y"see, I still couldn"t shake the impression that this world really resembled Stella Online. In other words, it might be that I still subconsciously saw all this under the lens of a "gamer".

There was practically no danger of dying in battle. As a result, the sense of reality was next to non-existent. That"s why feeling the fear of death in this situation didn"t come naturally to me. I understood the fact that I"d die for real if I got shot down. At least, I tried hard to internalize this fact. However, the only times I was shot down in Stella Online happened during my newbie days, when I wasn"t all that familiar with the gameplay and controls yet. The repair costs after getting shot down were astronomical after all. Insurance would help cover some of the expenses, but you"ll end up losing all your cargo anyway, so the resulting deficit would still be enormous. That"s why I always ensured that I acted with enough of a safety margin.     

If you misread the timing for retreat, you"d likely pay a steep price.

This much still won"t cut it. That"s what I always reminded myself back in the day. As a result, Krishna ended up equipped with three layers of energy shields and military grade armor apart from its considerably tough main hull. 

Furthermore, it"s also equipped with shield cells which could instantly recharge the energy shields quickly. Once used, the shields could be brought back up to full capacity after just a slight time lag. But the shield cells would be useless if the energy shields ever became completely depleted though.

Now then, about these shield cells - one or two would usually be equipped on standard ships, but Krishna actually has a whopping five of these babies. This practically meant that the ship"s main body was fully protected until all five shield cells were used up if you managed it well.

Whenever I engaged in battles in Stella Online, my rule of thumb was making a retreat once the number of active shield cells was reduced to one. As long as I had one active cell left, the odds of successfully escaping from my enemies was rather high.

Naturally however, if I attempted a retreat in a sloppy manner, then I"d just get my a.s.s handed to me. So I really had to be careful when making my escape. Basically, if I cut the power from the ship"s weapon systems and rerouted the generator output to the thrusters and shield, then it won"t be that difficult to shake off an enemy who had to keep supplying power to their weapons instead.

"Um, Hiro-sama…?"

"Hm? Ah, sorry. I was just thinking about some things."

Mimi hesitantly called out to me in a worried tone after noticing that I"ve clammed up. I smiled at her and shook my head to show that nothing was wrong.

"You don"t really need to worry all that much y"know. I"m fairly confident in my piloting skills and this ship packs quite the punch. And I"ve also made things clear in the briefing earlier right? I"ll promptly high-tail it if I feel that it"s getting a bit too dangerous. I operate with enough of a safety margin. Plus, I"ll have to consider you now too Mimi."

"Oh, no. I really am okay."

"Right. Just please do something about that pale, bluish face before saying something like that. But I guess this is just how it is. You"ll have to get used to it soon though. Oh, and before I forget, it"s best if you don"t eat much right before a battle. It"ll be a disaster-in-the-making otherwise."

"Uhh… I"ll keep that in mind."

I didn"t want to see the cute Mimi throwing up y"know. I probably won"t mind it much if that disappointing s.p.a.ce elf did it though. And well, if we really ended up vomiting inside the c.o.c.kpit, the odor might cause my concentration to drop or cause the equipment to malfunction. Nah, maybe not. This stuff"s military grade after all.

"Looks like the routine check"s just about done… Uh, Mimi, if you"re really feeling scared, would you like to stay behind in the colony instead?"

"N- No! I"ll definitely go! I still haven"t done anything useful for Hiro-sama. And if I run away here, I don"t think I"ll have the right to be by Hiro-sama"s side anymore."

Mimi squeezed both her hands into fists and made a guts pose. Her ample chest a.s.sets jiggled from her actions. Today, Mimi looked the part of a regular mercenary. She wore tight fitting spats and a durable-looking shirt. She also wore a jacket over her other clothes. Personally, I can"t help but feel that she was pushing it with the merc get-up, but I"ll get used to it soon. Probably.

Looks like Mimi"s more or less okay now, so we moved to the c.o.c.kpit and started preparing for launch. The routine maintenance check"s finished and the results are green. Looks like we"re in the clear.

"Mimi, we"re initiating launch procedures. Please contact the hangar control center."

"Y- Yes!"

Mimi plopped down on the Operator seat and clumsily fiddled with the console in front of her in order to obtain launch clearance. After a few moments, the main monitor displayed the launch count down. Unlike the docking procedure, the entire thing was apparently handled automatically by an A.I. 

I activated Krishna"s thrusters after the countdown finished and launched out from the hangar bay. The landing gears were retracted back inside the hull, and the ship finally exited from the Termaine Prime Colony back into outer s.p.a.ce.

"Amazing…"

"The scenery out here in s.p.a.ce is great huh. There"s an ocean of stars anywhere you look."

"Ah! So the colony… actually looked like that."

"It looks a lot like a bicycle wheel right?"

"Bicycle?"

"Uh, well, it"s a vehicle which used wheels that kinda looked like that."

"Is that so."

Mimi doesn"t seem familiar with a bike. But it"s quite eco-friendly y"know. I think it"ll do great as a mode of transport inside colonies. Maybe it didn"t function well under artificial gravity or something? It"s a mystery. When I checked the sensors, I found several other mercenary ships already on standby outside the colony.  

The ships piloted by mercenaries were quite varied, and there were no two ships which looked exactly alike. Strictly speaking, some were of the same models, but their details were drastically different because each of them was heavily customized according to personal taste.

"Wow, there"s a lot of colorful ships!"

"They look like that in order to stand out. Gotta make an impression on potential clients and all that."

By the way, Krishna"s paint job was matte dark blue which doubled as camouflage. In Stella Online, there was a high degree of freedom when it comes to customizing a ship"s coloring and decals. There were quite a few quirky looking ones such as a transport ship which had anime characters plastered all over its hull. I honestly didn"t subscribe to the idea all that much.

"What the- ? Now that"s quite the rare article…"

There was a conspicuous-looking pure white ship among the mercenaries. It had an elegant and streamlined frame reminiscent of a swan. Its large rear thruster gave it the impression of being considerably fast. In fact, it really was a unit geared for speed.

This ship"s official model name was [SSC-16 Galactic Swan] - among the Stella Online players, it was otherwise known as "White Meteor" (in the sense that it"ll eventually turn into a shooting star), "Fe***ri" (since it was akin to a disgustingly expensive luxury sports car), "Runaway Super Express" (to h.e.l.l) and so on.    

"Wow, what a beautiful ship!"

"You think so?"

"What"s the matter?"

"No, uh, well…"

Fastest top speed and mobility, decent firepower and powerful shield output - judging solely from these, you"d think it was an excellent model. But the problem lies with its aforementioned mobility.

Plainly speaking, it was just too lopsided of a design. Its handling was so wonky to the point that it could only go in a straight line most of the time and was an absolute nightmare to control when executing complex maneuvers. A friend of mine let me try it out a while back, and I couldn"t pilot it properly no matter how I tried. Another bad thing about it was its price-performance ratio. In order to achieve its insane acceleration, it utilizes a lot of high end parts which are quite expensive and the purchase and repair costs are ridiculously high as a result. Heck, its repair cost even trumps that of a full-fledged battleship. 

And the final and arguably worst thing about it was its tendency to go "berserk" under certain conditions. And it going berserk doesn"t mean that you"ll curbstomp all opposition. No sir. It won"t accept any control inputs and would just keep going straight with tremendous speed until the fuel runs out. And finally, it explodes.

When this feature was first discovered, people were screaming "Is this a Bug devs!?" and made quite a ruckus in-game. But when the said crazy devs investigated it, they found that it only occurred on this particular unit and won"t happen with any other ship. So they wrapped it up as a kind of quirky hidden feature and left it at that.

Its tendency to go out of control coupled with its bad handling, high purchase cost and repair fees eventually made players treat it as some sort of joke unit… And there was actually a merc who"d take such a machine to a life-and-death battle. But I guess if they could handle the thing properly, it wasn"t actually a bad machine to use. Both its speed and maneuverability exceeded Krishna"s after all. Then again, it did have this tendency to go berserk and explode to bits afterwards. That"s a huge demerit.

"Is it a bad ship?"

"Well, not really. If you can use it well, it"s a formidable machine. But it"s handling leaves a lot to be desired… If I were to say it straight, it"s a defective machine."

"Defective machine?"

"If some conditions are met, it"ll go wild and fly straight ahead until it explodes. Well, as long as you don"t push its speed past a certain point during combat maneuvers and don"t fire off a barrage of high density optical weapons, the conditions for it going berserk won"t be met." 

"Isn"t that plenty dangerous though?"

"Really dangerous. So the one piloting that thing either has to be a very experienced veteran who"s aware of the dangers or a fool who chose it merely due to its specs."

"I see."

I tapped the display to bring up that ship"s info and the owners name was… Captain Elma.

"Oh…"

"What is it?"

"Um, it seems that"s Elma"s ship."

"Eeeh!?"

Well she did say she was an experienced veteran, so I guess it"s alright?" 

It won"t go bonkers unless it"s armed to the teeth with laser weapons. Maybe. Probably. I hope…

Oh who am I kidding? Of all things, it was that disappointing s.p.a.ce elf who appeared piloting that kind of joke machine. Looks like the incident flag was already standing tall.    

"Let"s pray for her safety… It"s your first sortie after all Mimi."

"Yes, lets. I"m sure Elmsan will be fine."

I didn"t really want to see any of my acquaintances kick the bucket, but I guess there would be more of that coming as long as I continue to work as a mercenary. The moment you board a starship, you"ll be responsible for your own wellbeing. As much as I"d like to help out, I really couldn"t afford to right now. There"s not much I can do at this stage anyway. There"s no other choice but to simply pray for her safety. 

"Thirty minutes until the start of the operation. The coordinates of the target point have been sent to each starship. Please move out once the mission countdown finishes."

The Operator of the System Armed Forces transmitted the coordinates of the target point to each ship. Looks like recon drones have been deployed earlier and the enemies overall strength and composition was quite detailed. 

"The heck…"

"What"s the matter?"

"Nothing. It"s just a bit troublesome, that"s all."   

The coordinates we ended up getting a.s.signed to was one of the points where the enemy units were densest. Was this a.s.signed randomly? Or maybe… Captain Serena"s fox-like smile appeared in my head. It felt strangely lifelike. 

"Well, it"ll work out."

I could always just escape when it things got dangerous anyway. Though I doubt I"d have to, in any case. 

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