As Konoha and I looked after Kugi in her room, my terminal suddenly rang, playing a forceful “ba-dun!” sound.
That ringtone evokes the image of someone getting a Muay Thai kick in the rear…which means it must be her calling me. “Hello, how can I help you? I’m a mercenary who can solve your problems for a fee!”
“Sorry to rain on your parade, but I’m not in the mood for jokes at the moment. Emergency.” As I’d expected, Colonel Serena was on the line, but her tone of voice was unexpectedly urgent.
“I wasn’t exactly joking…but let’s put that aside for now. What’s going on?” I activated the terminal’s holo-display function, switching to a video call. The holo-display projected Colonel Serena’s elegant, slightly impatient face. As beautiful as ever.
“This is about the artifact he asked us to recover from the pirates. It appears that the pirates used some sort of machinery to try to open it and remove whatever is inside.”
“Ah…stop. I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to hear another word.”
“Avoiding reality doesn’t change it,” Serena retorted. “We’re doing what we’re able to, but we can only contain whatever’s inside for a few hours at most before it’s released.”
“Oh…” Goddammit. Nothing good ever comes of space pirates. “I understand what you meant by ‘emergency.’ Can you give me some concrete details on what exactly is happening? How much time does he say we have?”
“Well, according to him, a space monster he feels we’re incapable of handling is going to be released. And we have roughly two to three hours.”
By “he,” Serena and I were referring to Mr. Tetrahedron, himself an artifact left behind by an ancient intergalactic civilization that had been destroyed. So he thinks we have three hours tops?
If I activated the Black Lotus’s FTL drive and started zooming away right now, I could easily reach the outer system and escape through hyperdrive. Not that I was going to do that. The contract I’d made with Colonel Serena—with the Imperial Fleet, to be more precise—was still in effect. If I ran away here, I would not only have to pay a breach-of-contract penalty, I’d also ruin my reputation. I might even be charged with desertion under enemy fire for running away in the middle of a military operation.
“Okay. I understand the situation. By the way, Colonel Serena—if you promise to hold it close to the chest, I can share some good news and some bad news. Interested?”
“Again, I’m not in the mood for jokes right now—wait. No. All right, please tell me.”
I wasn’t one to crack jokes in such serious circumstances either, and Colonel Serena must’ve realized that, as she responded with the utmost seriousness. I hadn’t originally planned to share this with anyone, but I figured it’d be fine to tell her.
“You won’t tell anyone?”
“Very well; I won’t tell anyone.”
“You won’t get mad?”
“Fine… If it’s good news that might help us through this, I won’t get mad.”
All right; she’d agreed. I’d intended to keep this secret, since there was no way that anyone would know so long as I didn’t tell them. If we had less than three hours before that “dangerous space monster” Kugi mentioned was released, however, that changed things.
“I’m not only acquainted with forces capable of dealing with that space monster, but those forces are also rushing here right now,” I revealed.
“I find that hard to believe, but if you’re telling the truth, that is indeed good news. So what’s the bad news?”
“Those forces belong to another empire. They’re a fleet from a different galactic empire, not the Grakkan Empire. Specifically, the fleet is from the Holy Verthalz Empire.”
“Huh?”
It’d been a long time since I’d heard Serena respond with an intimidating “Huh?”
“What?!” she continued. “You—! Idi—!”
“Um… ‘What were you thinking? You know why we’re here in this star system, don’t you? Moron! You’re an idiot, aren’t you?!’ Are you trying to say something like that?” I asked.
“You understood all that?!” Serena demanded. “No—more to the point, why?! The Holy Verthalz Empire?! Why?!”
“Uh, well… Verthalz has developed technologies capable of predicting the future, like prophecy and fortune-telling. They must have sensed the potential danger here and decided to send their fleet. Not that I know for sure.” I’d decided to hide the fact that I helped Kugi summon the fleet through long-distance telepathy, instead making up a convenient reason why they might have been coming. I shouldn’t tell such brazen lies, huh? But white lies are acceptable sometimes, right?
“I…see? No—that makes no sense. Even if it were true, how would you know they’re coming?!”
“They sent me a telepathic message along the lines of ‘We’re on our way to your location right now.’”
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“You expect me to believe that?!” Colonel Serena retorted, her elegant face contorting on the holo-display.
Yeah… She can’t exactly blindly believe me and start giving her fleet commands on the basis of such a flimsy story. “Our crew includes a telepathy specialist, and I’ve also awoken comic book-esque superpowers. I’m telling the truth. Anyway, Temple Guard Officer Konoha of the Holy Verthalz Empire, how long until the fleet arrives?”
“Unless things changed in the time I’ve been gone,” Konoha answered, “they should be here within an hour and a half to two hours, so long as the immediate-response fleet hasn’t already embarked in response to a separate matter. If the fleet is currently preoccupied, then under normal circumstances, they should be able to assemble and deploy a second emergency-response fleet within three hours.”
“You heard her.”
“Did I? And how exactly is their fleet supposed to get here so quickly? The Holy Verthalz Empire is ridiculously far from the Riche System. Even if they travel by gateway, there’s no way they’ll make it here in time.”
“Konoha, you’re the expert. How will they get here in time?”
“No comment.” Konoha looked away. That was apparently a military secret.
“You heard her. It seems she’s not allowed to tell us.”
“Figures,” Colonel Serena said in resignation, eyes half closed. Evidently that explanation didn’t really satisfy her.
“I’ve heard rumors that Verthalz has proprietary fleet technology—psionic technology, that is—allowing them to ‘warp,’” I said. “And I think they probably have a method to greatly increase such a warp’s range—something like a catapult that grants output a significant temporary boost. Or maybe they’ve got something similar to a gateway that uses psionic technology.”
“Warping… I have heard such rumors.” Colonel Serena placed her shapely hand to her chin, sinking into thought.
Warping—traveling via space warp—was a different method of FTL interstellar travel, as opposed to the commonly used hyperdrive method. But, though that definition might have made it sound like an alternative way to travel through space, warping wasn’t exactly commonplace. In fact, Verthalz’s fleet was likely the only one equipped to travel in such a way. At least, I wasn’t aware of any other fleet that could.
Still, space warping was simple to explain. Rather than traveling by hyperlane, you instead warped to your intended destination. It was essentially a form of teleportation. It might’ve sounded similar to using a gateway, but gateways functioned differently. That method of travel that made use of wormholes to connect two points in space, so it would be more accurate to refer to gateways as wormhole technology than warp technology.
“Assuming that’s true,” said Colonel Serena, “what’s our play here…? No matter what, we won’t be able to retreat in time, so it’s best to prepare for battle. Be ready.”
“Aye-aye, ma’am.”
According to Mr. Tetrahedron, the combined forces of Colonel Serena’s Pirate-Hunting Unit and we mercenaries wouldn’t likely be a match for the space monster. Still, Serena’s mission was to secure the Riche System and Mr. Tetrahedron, who had information about a new resource material. That meant that she couldn’t just run away with her tail between her legs. And since I was contracted to the Pirate-Hunting Unit—or more specifically, the Imperial Fleet—I wasn’t allowed to flee either.
In the worst-case scenario, I’ll have no choice but to run away… Let’s just pray it doesn’t come to that. I’m counting on you, immediate-response fleet or whatever of the Holy Verthalz Empire.