Keep Watch From Now On (3)

Given that elite vessels like the Kraken-class Assault Combat Carrier and the Hresvelgr-class missile battleship could hardly be considered on the same level as ordinary capital ships, the players who'd been busily chatting and dissecting each other's combat power took one look at Icarus's newly arrived fleet and reached a conclusion.

With firepower like that, they were basically guaranteed a win this round. Might as well hop on the free bus. And so they decided to give him a thoroughly enthusiastic welcome.

Meanwhile, back at the same moment—

After coaxing the still-whimpering superhumans into settling down, I continued closing in on the allied fleet. Chat ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠notifications began flooding my vision in a cascade.

Faced with that genuinely fervent welcome—and watching our allies seamlessly fold our fleet into their massive formation—I figured that at the very least, the first round of this event wasn't going to devolve into some braindead troll-fest of pure nonsense.

I nodded to myself, feeling a deep and quiet satisfaction.

But as I chatted back and forth with the other players, killing time with leisurely combat prep and carefully arranging fleet positions, a thought suddenly struck me.

"Ah, by the way, Marianne?"

"What is it, Oppa?"

"If you're here, what's happening with the Pirate Union?"

Back when we'd first decided to come, things had been so hectic I hadn't even thought about it… but looking at it now—how should I put this.

According to what Marianne and the other pirate admirals had said before, the Pirate Union was perpetually overflowing with malcontents. Without Marianne, their empress, periodically dropping in to clamp down hard, the whole thing would collapse.

So if she'd just up and left like this… wasn't the Pirate Union going to fall apart on the spot? The concern kept bubbling up anew.

When I carefully floated the thought her way, Marianne gave me a blank look that made it impossible to tell what she was thinking.

But only for a moment.

Then her face lit up with a bright smile. She said she understood what I was worried about—but that I didn't need to worry at all—and launched into her explanation with total confidence.

"Oppa! You're worried about me? That's so sweet!"

"Uh… well…"

"But it's fine. There shouldn't be any major problems this time."

"…Okay, why?"

She was so brazenly self-assured that question marks practically materialized over both my head and Jessica's beside me. Marianne kept that same confident air as she proceeded to demonstrate exactly why the lore called her the Pirate Empress.

"Because the southern campaign kicked off, and I used the opportunity to legally purge every last one of those whining little maggots!"

"Oh."

"The other side was practically throwing troops away on purpose down there anyway, so I just used them as meat shields under the pretext of holding off the Earth Federation's main force."

…So the two factions and the mega-clans were supposedly going at it for real, but it was just another episode of WWE?

Hearing a pirate use the word "legally" had already left me with a distinctly weird feeling—and then learning from Marianne herself that the southern campaign had basically been professional wrestling made the whole thing even more complicated, subtle, and deeply strange.

Separately from all that, watching her casually announce that she'd purged her own internal dissenters sent a genuine chill down my spine…

"Reliable as ever, Marianne!"

"Ehehe."

"Commander, Marianne really is remarkably good at her job."

"Mm, she is."

Jessica immediately pulled Marianne into a hug and shot me a pointed look—

The quest window popped up on cue. I gave Marianne a few affirming murmurs of recognition and set about thoroughly ruffling her hair.

Squish-squish, ruffle-ruffle.

While we busied ourselves with these little side tasks, no actual combat had broken out since our arrival. With fleet formations locked in and nothing left to do, the gathered players had taken to hopping into small shuttles, touring the Kraken and Hresvelgr I'd brought along, and snapping proof-of-presence selfies with the Kraken as their backdrop. It was all thoroughly, endearingly trivial.

To be fair, if I were staring at a big goddamn space monster the size of a small moon, I'd want a selfie too…

Did I come here to participate in an event, or did I just show up to be the tourist attraction at a player hangout?

I'd signed up for an event and somehow become the main exhibit. The feeling was hard to shake. I screenshotted a few of the more unusually shaped gacha ships the other players had brought, then opened the chat window to voice my confusion.

The moment my question hit the chat, answers came flooding back.

In other words, we were essentially sitting in a matchmaking queue.

And the second I heard that, a thought bloomed in my head: if I launched my fighters now, couldn't I get a preemptive strike in on the enemy?

Of course, I wasn't the first player to have that idea.

That last comment went somewhere weird, but the summary was clear: the system had hard-blocked it.

Well, from a balance standpoint, that tracks.

And once I'd asked a single question, the other players—apparently experiencing the strange thrill of being quizzed by a veteran ranker—started volunteering answers I hadn't even asked for.

Well, that covered everything I needed to know. I pulled my eyes off the chat window and issued orders to Jessica, who was standing by at my side.

"Jessica."

"Yes, Commander?"

"Put our entire fleet on combat alert. And the Neranzara?"

"Still submerged. According to their report, strangely enough, there's no energy drain."

The Neranzara-class had arrived already submerged from the start. By both the wiki lore and its in-game ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠performance specs, it should have been forced to surface by now—and yet it was holding steady. I nodded, figuring the energy consumption would kick in the moment combat began, then ordered the fighter bays prepped for immediate launch and decided to stretch out and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠rest until the system finally started the battle.

But the instant I stood up from the command seat with that plan in mind—