The Gatekeeper
No. Why? How? Why?
Using a colossal planetary fortress as a gatekeeper instead of a fleet—how underhanded could you get? It was a textbook example of camping the choke point, and I could barely keep my rage in check.
A radar that detects cloaking designed to evade radar? What kind of elementary-school bullshit is this…!
But sixteen years of hard lessons had drilled one truth into my bones: pure anger never fixed a damn thing.
PAUSED
I hit pause for a moment, patched up my crumbling mental state, then—
PAUSE RELEASED
—asked Levia how far the fortress’s detection range actually reached.
As long as we don’t get too close, right? Even if it takes a while, we can just swing around past the system’s outer rim.
At my words Levia made a strange little hum, like an ancient computer powering up, and seemed to think it over…
A moment later.
“Mm. We’ve just entered the fortress’s surveillance range.”
“…Huh?”
The second her utterly flat, emotionless statement ended, every alarm on the bridge went into full-blown seizure. The operators linked to those systems—or simply watching them—seized right along with them and screamed at us.
“Minister!!! A massive energy signature is inbound from the front!”
Shit.
My gaze snapped toward the source of their screams and found something rather large. No—something very large. An obscenely, ridiculously enormous particle beam was streaking straight at us.
“Look at that. Truly impressive firepower.”
“Minister!”
“Full evasion!”
Even with a beam the thickness of a continent screaming toward us, that true lunatic Minister Vermouth was still calmly analyzing the technical specs. I grimaced inwardly at the sight and threw myself into piloting my small, precious Leviathan so the insane beam wouldn’t swallow us whole.
Fortunately, we managed to avoid being reduced to free-floating atoms by the continent-sized particle beam. A normal battleship would have been caught in the effective radius long before it could even begin an evasion maneuver…
“Remarkable power. Even skirting the beam’s path by a few hundred thousand kilometers would have vaporized most vessels outright.”
Had we been in anything ordinary, we would have evaporated exactly as the thoroughly excited Minister Vermouth described—despite having just nearly died to the thing.
> External armor waste-heat purge in progress… residual heat collected and ejected as waste.
“Whoa, we clearly got clear of the effective range, but the armor’s still heated to the brink of melting.”
Our Leviathan, a vessel from the distant Dark Age, was something else entirely. A warship tens of kilometers long had just pulled off a burst of agility that put most fighters to shame and slipped free of that deranged ultra-massive particle beam. Of course, a beam the size of a continent still painted the hull with so much radiant heat that Levia had to gather it and dump it as waste.
> Cooling complete. Stealth systems initiating.
The moment the ship’s own cooling finished, the bridge operators immediately reactivated the stealth systems we had installed. While I was busy dodging, I must have subconsciously wanted to put as much distance as possible between us and that damned fortress. When I looked up from the operators’ work, the fortress already seemed far more distant than before.
“Levia? Have we actually pulled farther away from the fortress?”
“Yes. As a result, we have exited the fortress’s surveillance radar range… so we should be free of major trouble for a while.”
It wasn’t just a feeling—we really had gotten farther away. Without real combat experience, no amount of mental preparation could hide the cracks when it counted.
Can’t be helped. Since we’re already this far out…
To shake off the awkwardness I waved at Riel and the others nearby and said,
“Then start with a damage report. If waste heat built up enough to cook the armor, something must have taken a hit.”
“Got it. You all heard that, right? Move it!”
Watching everyone scramble into motion at my words, I suddenly understood why fleet admirals and captains refused to leave their ships even when offered higher rank. One word from me and the entire crew surged to obey. It was living authority itself—no wonder they clung to those posts.
But the moment that thought landed, I remembered I was supposed to be the absolute peak of that authority…
Wait. Why do I feel like I’ve never actually tasted power like this?
I was easily inside the top five of a vast empire’s power structure. Yet experiencing true power-play for the first time left me with a strange sensation. Everything I had done so far felt less like the behavior of a ruler and more like…
…a galactic civil servant.
The self-deprecating label players of this game had always muttered was exactly what I had been living out.
Being a civil servant isn’t wrong, but…
My mental state started veering into weird territory, and I realized I couldn’t rein it in by willpower alone.
PAUSED
I immediately hit pause and deliberately settled in for a proper mental wander.
Subjectively, a long time passed.
Right. No need to dwell on this, and no time for it either.
I finally reached the self-justification stage, and oddly enough it left my mental state stronger than before.
All this shaking and fluster is just lack of real combat experience—and the fact that I was completely unprepared for it.
I kept repeating the words in my head, not even sure who I was making excuses to… then, feeling my resolve a little firmer, I released the pause and faced reality again.
PAUSE RELEASED
But right after that—
“Minister, internal systems check is complete.”
“…Hm?”
“Aside from part of the external armor cooling system, the ship itself is undamaged.”
Levia’s report from beside me nearly made me freeze in place.
Already?
Honestly, the reaction was fair. To me it had felt like ages, but real time couldn’t have been more than a minute. Not even a minute—barely a few dozen seconds.
My bewilderment must have shown on my face, because Levia reported with her usual blank expression, completely unfazed.
“You seem to have forgotten, but this ship and I essentially share a single mind.”
“…Right.”
“Therefore, if any problem arises aboard, I can identify it instantly and inform you, Minister.”
So this was… the capability of a Dark Age vessel? Even modern ships already performed feats that would have looked like magic compared to the reality I came from. The Leviathan, built with technology that dwarfed even those, was practically a living thing.
I watched Levia deliver her report without so much as a blink and thought,
Ha. Now I finally understand why the setting books and the old community always ranked Dark Age tech as the absolute best.
I was about to nod at her calm—no, proud—demeanor and offer some proper praise.
“Impres—”
But at that exact moment—
“Gyaaaaaaaaah!!!!”
A high-pitched scream of pure despair filled the entire bridge and cut my words off cold.
…That voice again. Minister Vermouth.
Wondering if bringing her along had been a mistake, I turned toward the source of the scream with half-lidded eyes.
“The stealth equipment is completely wrecked!!!”
“Every circuit melted! How are we supposed to fix this?!”
“We prepared spares!”
“The entire storage bay with the spare parts melted! What do you want us to do?!”
Hearing the frenzied screams of the Technology and Science Ministry bureaucrats, I naturally turned my gaze back to Levia.
And under that look, Levia simply…
“…That was only additional equipment. I had no way of knowing.”
—offered nothing but a declaration of complete innocence regarding the tragic death of the poor stealth systems.