“How are our fighters holding up?” Koutarou asked.
“Not to worry, Your Excellency,” Nefilforan answered. “They safely retreated to the designated location.”
“That was some good flying; it was like I was looking at an aerobatic flight,” Koutarou said.
Nefilforan bowed. “Your praise honors us.”
The three fighters from Hidden Leaves were safe. They had dived into the Blue Knight’s shadow and protected themselves from the asteroid chunks, having swept past the enemy with skilled flying and ended up behind the Blue Knight. That was why Kiriha hadn’t sent out the Blue Knight’s fighters. They were tired from training with a new model, and an increase in numbers would work against them.
“Your Excellency, we leave the rest to you,” Nefilforan said.
“You have some good pilots, Princess,” Koutarou answered.
“We have gone through a lot together. They are my proud subordinates.”
Hidden Leaves was in a more dangerous situation. Its distortion field was weaker than the Blue Knight’s. However, since it specialized in charges, its front was extra sturdy. It had just barely been able to turn the front of the ship toward the asteroid chunks in time.
Through their efforts, they had all escaped danger, but the Liberation Army wasn’t so lucky. The fighters had taken the biggest hit, and Dalize could hear the screams of the crew through the comms.
“A meteor shower?!”
“No! This is debris they intentionally made!”
“Now’s not the time for that!”
They had no idea what was going on and had been by the Blue Knight’s feet in pursuit of the Hidden Leaves’s fighters. They had been sure they were cornering the enemy until the missiles had hit. As a result, they’d been defenseless when chunks of asteroids had come flying. The result was disastrous, with not a single craft unharmed. The ones that were the best off had lost the ability to fly, while the worst had been shot down.
“Was this what they were after from the start?!” Dalize slammed his fist into his armrest. Even as he did, damage reports continued coming in.
“Change course and deploy distortion field! We’ll get caught up in it!”
“We’re not going to make it!”
“What is going oooonnn?!”
The fleet had suffered major damage, although less than the fighters thanks to their distortion fields.
“What’s the damage?” Dalize asked.
“Three ships are unable to navigate!” the operator answered.
“That many?!”
Two vessels had been shielded by the others, and Dalize’s ship in the rear had avoided the chunks of asteroid. Not even Forthorthe’s battleships could have fully blocked the enormous masses that were raining down on them. But their misfortune wasn’t over yet.
Another scream and the sounds of explosions came over the comms. For a second, Dalize thought these were secondary explosions, but the reality was different.
“What is it?!” he shouted.
“It’s the Blue Knight!” the other ship reported.
“The Blue Knight?!”
“It appeared from behind the debris and—”
Suddenly, the comms cut out. At the same time, one of the unharmed ships’ identification signals shifted to display that it was disabled. For some reason, it had taken more damage and been rendered unable to fight. If the last report was to be believed, it had been an attack by the Blue Knight.
“Where is the Blue Knight?!” Dalize demanded that his subordinates locate the ship. If he didn’t quell the confusion and counterattack, they would be defeated.
“We can’t tell! There’s too much debris!” the operator answered.
“Preposterous!” Dalize exclaimed.
They were unable to locate the Blue Knight as the chunks of asteroid filled the area. The asteroid in question had a common composition with a lot of iron. With it covering their surroundings, the radar wasn’t functioning normally.
“There it is! It’s the Blue Knight!” the other remaining ship reported before its identification signal shifted to “disabled” as well.
The Blue Knight could locate the Liberation Army and was taking them down one after another, and Dalize was panicking.
“They should be in the same situation as us! How can they locate us so accurately?!” he asked.
“I have no idea. What is going on?!” the vice captain replied.
“He’s a monster... This is the legendary hero...” Dalize muttered as he stared at the monitor in front of him, filled with a sense of helplessness.
On the monitor, he could see the enemy flagship slipping into view. It rapidly grew bigger and swung its massive right arm. By blending in with the debris, it was sneaking up on ships and taking them down with hand-to-ship combat. And while that made it less likely to be detected, it went against all logic in fleet battles. They wouldn’t be able to intercept it in time, and Dalize knew there was nothing they could do.
Nobody could believe it when Kiriha had first suggested that they shatter the asteroid. Not even Koutarou, who had been the one to bring up the asteroid in the first place. They couldn’t understand what she meant, but in the end, they had done what she wanted. Everyone knew that Kiriha wouldn’t suggest something for no reason.
“I think that’s the last spaceship that can fight,” Sanae noted. “They’re just running around instead of taking aim at us.”
“Good work. That’s mission complete, Sanae,” Kiriha said in relief.
Scattering chunks of asteroids around the area rendered the radar unusable for a while. But with Sanae, they could still locate the enemy. The fleet being damaged was just a side effect. Kiriha’s goal had always been to blind them.
That should limit casualties to a minimum... A satisfactory result, she thought.
A regular fleet battle would result in a lot of death regardless of victory or defeat. They would be forced to use weapons with high firepower, and damaged ships could explode. But that could be avoided if they snuck up on the ships and took each one out in a single strike. Kiriha had come up with the plan to reduce the number of casualties, but she hadn’t been able to tell what the outcome would be like and didn’t tell Koutarou what she’d been after. So she let out a sigh of relief.
“So, this is what you were after. I was surprised,” Shizuka commented. Her eyes were wide open. Now that she’d seen the results for herself, she understood what Kiriha had meant, but she hadn’t understood it at all at the start.
“Considering how confused we were, they must have been even more confused,” Harumi said with a somewhat troubled expression. She’d been surprised when Koutarou had brought out an asteroid, but she was amazed by Kiriha’s skill to take advantage of even that.
“Harumi, you overestimate me,” Kiriha replied. “Being able to successfully fracture the asteroid was fortunate. It was still an extremely dangerous choice.”
Kiriha didn’t think she’d done anything impressive. She hadn’t studied the power of the missiles or the composition of the asteroid in detail. It had been a vague move that she had hoped would bring about the desired outcome. If it hadn’t worked out, she would have done something else; it had just happened to work out when they’d given it a shot.
“That doesn’t matter as long as it stops the fighting,” Koutarou said. He didn’t care if it was luck or ability that had caused it. The important part was ending the battle quickly so that neither enemy nor ally suffered many losses. Friend or foe, there would be someone who mourned people of Forthorthe being hurt. Koutarou welcomed this result for their sake.
“Yeah, that’s it. I’m glad it ended quickly,” Yurika agreed.
“I think so too. And now that I can relax, I’m feeling hungry,” Sanae added.
They wanted any fighting to end quickly and for as many as possible to be safe. Although their ways of expressing these feelings differed, it seemed all of the girls wished for that outcome.
But that assumption was mistaken. There was actually someone who had long awaited this moment.
Considering the new Blue Knight had been deployed, the Liberation Army that had been scraped together had no chance of winning. Assuming that only the new Blue Knight and Hidden Leaves would be deployed after the launching ceremony, they might have just barely won in firepower in spite of losing in every other regard, be it gathering information, planning, fighting experience, coordination, or anything else. But overall, no matter how anyone thought about it, there was no way to beat the Blue Knight, so one person had taken a chance.
“As expected. You have a clear opening at this moment, Blue Knight...”