Watch Each Other's Backs (2)
Most of the users who'd been camping the gallery were vanishing one after another, leaving nothing behind but their event participation proof shots.
While I was watching the gallery empty out like that, the transport destroyers finished stockpiling resources. At the same time, word came in that the resource mining ships — which doubled as repair ships — had arrived from the resource zone.
I was about to bundle the entire fleet together and commit to the event right then and there.
But at that exact moment, Marianne came barreling out of wherever she'd been parked and charged straight at me.
"Oppa! I wanna go too!"
"Huh?"
She latched onto me and refused to let go, insisting she was coming along to wherever the event was being held.
"We finally got to see each other again. There's no way I'm spending a whole week without Oppa!"
"Oh my."
"Whoa."
The way she just slammed that confession home without a shred of hesitation left me with a complicated tangle of feelings — but only for a second. The moment Marianne started whining about being taken along, what hit me first wasn't embarrassment or any other emotion. It was suspicion.
Wait. Taking Marianne with us — is that even possible?
The event announcement had made it crystal clear: mercenary companies and faction fleets were barred from participating. And Marianne was, for all intents and purposes, the head of a faction fleet. Could she really tag along with us?
The answer to that nagging doubt was spoon-fed to me by Jessica, standing right beside me.
"Commander, are you not planning to bring Marianne along?"
"That's not it. The problem is whether Marianne — as a faction leader — is even allowed to follow us."
"Does that really matter? The restrictions only cover fleets and mercenary companies. Supers are explicitly allowed."
"…Huh."
She had a point. So we floated the idea to Marianne — if she wanted to come, she'd have to come alone. Her flagship probably couldn't make the trip. Was she okay with that?
"It's fine! The girls who came with me will take care of the flagship!"
"Oh."
She was ready to ditch a battleship she'd supposedly captured from some Earth Federation clan and heavily modified, just so she could come by herself. I nodded, then slotted a brand-new, sparkling entry — Marianne — into my fleet's super roster.
I hit Y on the glittering event participation message floating in front of me and locked in our entry.
The instant I confirmed it—
"Commander! A massive wormhole has appeared in front of the base!"
"Wow. So that's how it works."
"It's enormous."
A pitch-black hole large enough to swallow even this colossal base had torn open in front of us.
"All right. Let's go!"
"Yes, sir."
I took every ship waiting at the base, boarded the Hresvelgr with Jessica, and steered us straight into that deep, dark hole.
As we traveled through the wormhole toward the Ancient Capital, my fleet — with the Kraken at the vanguard — made its final combat preparations. Meanwhile, Jessica and I were on the Hresvelgr's bridge, talking through what lay ahead.
"How many commanders do you think will show up for the event?"
"Hard to say. Given that they're handing out full invulnerability protection, I'd bet most users will join."
Anyone skipping this event was either a genuine eccentric or locked in a life-or-death clan war. Short of that, almost nobody would sit it out. The thought of emerging from the wormhole to find hundreds of thousands of users and their fleets — hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of ships of every shape and size, filling the void in a spectacular panorama — had my anticipation climbing fast.
That said, I had zero interest in putting my entire force on full display for everyone to gawk at.
"Tell the Neranzara: the moment we exit the wormhole, dive into subspace and hold position."
"Understood, Commander."
Unlike everything else, the Neranzara-class could actually stay hidden — so we were going to make damn sure it stayed that way.
But my expectations of witnessing a fleet on that insane scale were about to take a hit.
"Fleet exiting the wormhole shortly!"
"Oh."
The NPC on the bridge reported in, and a flash of pure white light later, my fleet spilled out of the wormhole into… a scene that was nothing like what I'd imagined. There weren't nearly as many ships as I'd expected.
"That's still quite a few."
"A lot, yeah."
In hindsight, the scale I'd been picturing had been pure delusion.
> Current Participants: 10 / 10
> Preparing for combat…
The roughly one thousand ships waiting where we'd appeared somehow managed to feel more oppressive precisely because I could take them all in at a glance.
And unlike last time with the Unity Clan — four hundred and eight ships with barely ten vessels larger than a heavy cruiser — the other users here had each brought along a few battlecruisers or light carriers of their own. Even a rough count put the number of battlecruiser-class and above at over fifty. Jessica and I weren't the only ones thrown off. Every super linked into the fleet command and combat reporting channels looked rattled.
"Oh my… Commander, you're not seriously planning to fight that, are you?"
"Commander, our ships — patrol craft and repair ships included — total a mere sixty-five."
Of course, those people weren't our enemies. Calling them allies wouldn't have been a stretch. Once Jessica and I got our heads straight, we had to put real effort into calming down the panicking supers.
While Icarus was busy restoring his supers' mental fortitude by explaining that the other fleets were not hostiles, the users who'd arrived early and been waiting were equally stunned by the fleet that had just joined them.
Naturally, the first thing that left the other users slack-jawed was the Kraken — which had grown even bigger since last time. But that only lasted a moment. As Icarus's fleet drew closer, they started to realize just how unusual its composition really was.
Granted, looking purely at ship classes and the raw number of capital ships, it wasn't exactly an overwhelming force…