The Final Week (6)
"Well, if their ranking's higher than mine, they ought to at least put up that much of a fight, don't you think?"
"…I can't exactly argue with that, sir."
But as the commander said it, a thoroughly wicked smile spread across their face — and the male adjutant could only shake his head inwardly, recognizing that his commander's playful streak and obsessive streak had both kicked in once again.
And while the adjutant was thinking that—
"Ah, right. How bad was the damage to that guy's fleet?"
"Confirmed sunk: four cruisers, two destroyers, and twelve corvettes. At least five more looked to be moderately damaged or worse."
"Hmm. Not as many as I expected?"
"Our own fleet's total losses don't even crack fifteen ships. I'd call that a win, wouldn't you?"
"No. Considering the only way we can replenish ships is by capturing them in boarding actions… it's not actually that great."
Having reviewed the battle results once more, the commander tapped a finger against the command console, lost in thought for a moment. Then they rose from their seat and issued additional orders to the adjutant.
"Then this isn't over."
"I agree, Commander."
"We've got repair ships stashed nearby, right? Mobilize those too and put some real speed on the fleet repairs."
"Understood."
"Run the onboard self-repair modules at full capacity as well. Tell them to hurry the refit."
"Yes, Commander."
Despite having scored a fairly substantial victory against Icarus's fleet in the opening engagement, the commander had no intention of assuming the man would be so rattled he'd simply hole up in his base. They moved quickly to restore their own fleet and prepare for the next fight to come.
But less than three hours after those repair operations began—
"Commander!"
"Hm?"
"The enemy commander's fleet has reappeared on the forward screen!"
"Composition?"
"One Overseer-class heavy cruiser, plus cruisers and a handful of destroyers!"
"…Heh."
Icarus's fleet — which the commander had assumed would withdraw after taking heavy losses — had returned far faster than expected. Taking in the report, the commander twirled a finger through their long, curly pink hair and broke into a bright smile.
"Kyaa, now that's the kind of fighting spirit you'd expect from rank three!"
Having steeled my nerves and committed to round two, I decided to try a slightly different approach against this veteran.
The idea was to flip the usual bait-and-main-force setup on its head. I'd use my precious Overseer and its cruiser squadron as both bait and anvil — then form a mobile strike group built around the five Azkran-class destroyers I'd just bought from the shop. While the Overseer and Pashtura drew aggro with ultra-long-range bombardment, our mobile force would swing around and deliver a beautifully timed smack to the back of the enemy fleet's head.
The catch was that the other side almost certainly had at least one long-range firepower specialist in the same vein as Pashtura. Throwing the cruiser squadron in raw would get them shredded — that much was obvious.
Kzzzzzt. Kzzzzzt.
"Kzzzzzzt."
"…What are you doing, Commander?"
"Ah, nothing. Never mind."
This time I slotted resource-mining ships into the bait main force, so they could repair on the spot and hold even under fire. At the same time, I loaded the mobile fleet with the ultra-premium heavy torpedoes I'd pulled from a gacha pull last time and had been carefully husbanding ever since — fully prepared to show the enemy what a proper death-spike alpha strike looked like.
With every preparation I could make locked in, I ordered the sortie toward their fleet.
The battlefield I chose was a stretch of space near a large-scale resource extraction zone I'd been working — thick with asteroid fields, perfect for a flanking force to move without being spotted. The trade-off was that navigating the asteroids slowed the fleet down, and anything cruiser-sized or larger couldn't pass through at all. But since the mobile force was composed entirely of destroyers and smaller, that wasn't a real problem. And the superhumans riding with them — Ignis and Partia — didn't have any fleet-related buffs anyway, so they were only bringing their raw specs to the table.
That meant the main force carrying Belial, Pashtura, and Griyanaar would have to buy enough time for the mobile group's flanking strike and rear assault to land. So I locked the main force into a pure long-range bombardment formation, fully intending to enjoy a good old-fashioned artillery slugfest with the enemy…
But the moment round two actually started against this bastard — guy or girl, I still couldn't tell — they did something unexpected. Despite being an expeditionary force with limited options for resupply and refit, the instant my cruiser squadron entered their detection range, they launched their fleets straight out of the resource zone they'd been squatting in, as if they'd been waiting for exactly this, and moved immediately into an intercept posture.
And this time they weren't keeping their distance, trading fire and evasion the way they had in round one.
"Commander! The enemy is charging!"
"Ah, damn it."
They were leveraging their excellent mobility to charge in like berserkers — and because I'd thinned out the small-ship count in the main force to free them up for the mobile group, our close-combat capability was paper-thin. They'd spotted that weakness and came barreling in under a full barrage. I snarled and started reversing the fleet.
"Pull the fleet back! Keep firing while you reverse!"
"Understood, Commander!"
One wrong move and this wouldn't be buying time — it'd be getting destroyed in piecemeal commitment. Belial, directing the fight on-site in my place, sniped the enemy capital ships with the Overseer and Pashtura's fire while pulling the forward destroyers and cruisers back, doing everything possible to open the distance.
The problem was that we were already slow, and we were reversing. They, on the other hand, were pushing full speed ahead with no regard for casualties. It wasn't long after the engagement opened before—
"Enemy ships in close range!"
"Ah, shit."
—my main force was finally overtaken, the two fleets tangled together, and the whole thing collapsed into a chaotic brawl.
And of course, in a close-quarters scrap like this, small ships were everything. My main force had all of five destroyers. The enemy small-ship swarm focused them down one after another until every last one of them was space dust — and then it was my precious Overseer and the rest of the heavy and light cruisers taking the beating.
In the middle of that mess, the Overseer and Pashtura's beams happened to interfere with each other and scatter outward, and a lucky shot vaporized ten tightly clustered enemy small ships in a single instant. But right after that, one of the Overseer's main guns was destroyed. And whatever character the enemy had — I still couldn't identify them — some superhuman was firing battleship-grade beam cannons at point-blank range the way Pashtura did, and every time they fired, one of our cruisers either split clean in two or, if we were lucky, took catastrophic damage and then got finished off by someone else's follow-up shot.
It was a slaughter, and it was doing catastrophic things to my mental state. Even Belial, who'd been fighting to hold the line, ended up sacrificing three regular cruisers as tanks just to keep the Overseer alive — and then her voice came over the channel, urgent, recommending a full retreat.
"Commander, at this rate the fleet will be annihilated."
"Belial's right, Commander. The self-repair systems I installed can't keep up with the damage accumulating this fast."
And now Griyanaar, riding aboard the Overseer, was saying the same thing. I gave up waiting for the still-silent mobile force and was about to issue the retreat order.
But right at that moment—
"Enemy contact!"
"Savior — we have arrived."
"…OOOOOOOH!"
Our long-awaited mobile force had finally broken free of those damned asteroid fields — and they drove a furious rear-end strike straight into an enemy who'd let their guard down and pulled their precious cruisers to the rear.
I'm sure the other side had given some thought to ambushes and flanking maneuvers of their own. But — completely unintentional on our part — our main force had gotten so thoroughly wrecked that it was pure cow-steps-backward-and-catches-a-mouse luck. They'd let their guard down.
"As the Savior wills! Charge!"
"KYAAAAAAAAH!"
Watching the mobile force erupt from the asteroid field and come screaming in at full speed, the enemy scrambled to shove their rear cruisers forward toward their small ships, trying to grab the close-range escort buffs those ships provided—