One-Shot Fleet
"The more complicated things get, the more it comes down to whoever uses the fundamentals best."
She tapped her own temple with a finger as she said it — and promptly blew up another enemy battleship with textbook tactics. Watching her, I found myself relearning a fundamental truth: basics really are everything.
You just got used, you know.
With that final display of Betelgeuse's self-satisfied brilliance, I cut the comms. And maybe it was because I'd just spent the last several minutes getting thoroughly roasted by her, but Jessica — who'd been watching from behind — stepped closer, worry written all over her face.
"Commander, are you all right?"
"Of course I am. Perfectly fine."
I shrugged and grinned at Jessica's concern — and at Arcadia, who still hadn't closed her own channel. And why wouldn't I? Look at the situation we were in.
It might have looked like Betelgeuse's crash course in compressed real-combat politics, but the truth was we were still in the middle of an active battle. Thanks to my relentless stream of over-the-top praise and theatrical wailing, Betelgeuse had to keep one eye on me, keep reading Marianne's mood for reasons I still didn't fully understand, field Arcadia's constant needling, and fight and pressure the enemy all at once.
The inevitable result: she was grinding her own ships against the enemy fleet, solo-tanking and solo-DPS'ing on our behalf.
Which was exactly what we'd been angling for.
"Judging by Betelgeuse's usual reactions, she cut the call because she realized she'd been baited."
"Nice."
Arcadia and I exchanged a thumbs-up through the comm screen, silently congratulating each other on a plan well executed.
Jessica's worry, however, was pointed in a slightly different direction than I'd expected.
"Commander, what are you going to do if that Betelgeuse person decides to get revenge once the event is over?"
"…Hmm."
Hearing it out loud, I had to admit she had a point. What if, the second the event ended, an enraged Betelgeuse sent the entire Loki Clan storming our way?
Of course, a whole clan wouldn't realistically mobilize just to beat up one guy. And more importantly — if they tried, Marianne, our Pirate Empress, who'd so far been content to focus purely on defending my base, would almost certainly go nuclear and declare all-out war on the Loki Clan.
But the more I thought it through, the less I worried about Betelgeuse's retaliation.
Anyone looking at the damage her fleet had taken could see it was entirely self-inflicted — the product of her own showboating. She'd strutted around going I'm a genius, bow before me, put on a full exhibition of her brilliance, then cheerfully charged into the enemy and lost ships in the process. Coming after us over that would mean stomping her own pride into the dirt. That pink little brat would rather die than admit we'd played her.
Granted, as clan leader of the Loki Clan — the grand cathedral of trolls — she might swallow her pride, put on an iron face, and come swinging anyway. But that was only a real threat if I had no backing.
Right now, standing behind me was Justice — a mega-clan on par with Loki itself. Dragging a third power like Justice into a war already being fought against the Humanity Clan and the Earth Federation main force, alongside the southern clans and the Pirate Union… that was strategically insane. Pink-and-pretty wouldn't go for it.
I laid all of that out for Jessica, and she nodded in agreement.
"So you had it all figured out, Commander. I thought you were just sitting there getting chewed out by Commander Betelgeuse without a single thought in your head."
"…Excuse me?"
We killed a little more time with that kind of banter, and before long the ninth battle was drawing to a close.
But contrary to what Betelgeuse, Arcadia, and a few other players had expected — that a demoralized opponent would surrender quickly — the enemy had other ideas. After Betelgeuse's fleet shredded one player's entire force, their two strongest commanders stepped up to stall me, Betelgeuse, Arcadia, and one nameless player's fleet, buying time while the remaining seven peeled off to pick apart our allies one by one — allies who'd gone soft and complacent after watching the slaughter.
Which meant we suddenly had to reverse the flow of the fleeing players, push upstream, and force a head-on decisive battle against the enemy main force just to keep from getting picked apart ourselves.
Naturally, most of the deserters swung back around and rejoined the line once they saw us engaging the main force, and a full fleet brawl erupted.
The result:
"Nyaaa, I almost died out there."
"But you lived, so it's fine♡"
We'd clawed out a win — but the price was steep. My fleet, Arcadia's, Betelgeuse's, and every other player's had each lost at least one capital ship in the bloodletting.
That battlecruiser might even have limped away under normal circumstances. But the presence of a resource mining ship — which doubled as a repair vessel — on the loss list told the whole story. Three absolute bastards of players had waited until the fleet battle was nearly over, then coldly sucker-punched us from behind for a critical hit.
All I had left now were five combat ships: the Kraken, the Hresvelgr, a light carrier, a battlecruiser, and the Naranja.
On top of that, transport destroyers armed with nothing but a single anti-ship beam cannon — and completely unarmed resource mining/repair ships — had gotten swept into the fleet brawl and gone up like fireworks.
"Commander, we only have two repair ships left."
"…Well. At least we survived somehow."
Combat and non-combat ships combined, we were down to fewer than ten vessels. I let out a long breath of relief that the next fight would be the last.
But that wasn't the real problem.
"Actually, Commander, the real crisis isn't that we only have two repair ships left."
"Hm?"
The moment the battle ended and we were shunted into the waiting area, Jessica said that, and a question mark practically floated over my head. She sighed, then pointed at the destroyers listed in the loss report.
"With all those transport destroyers destroyed, we're short on resources for replenishing fighters and repairing ships."
"…Wh-wh-wh-wh-wh-what?!"
I couldn't even get out a coherent Jessica, what are you talking about — language itself seemed to collapse. But I managed to grab hold of my sanity and fire back a question.
"Jessica, every capital ship was storing hundreds to thousands of units of resources on board, wasn't it? Not just the destroyers?"
"Yes, that's right."
"And we're still short?"
"We're already drawing on those stores right now. Everything that was on the transport destroyers turned into space dust along with the ships."
"…"
I nodded at her honest answer and decided to get an exact count of what we had left.
But—
"Once we repair Marianne's battlecruiser and restock the light carrier's fighters, we're completely dry."
"…"
"We can't even fully restock the fighters — not enough resources. We can barely put together a single complete attack wing."
"You've got to be kidding."
According to Jessica, that meant the final battle would have no fighter replenishment — and no reloads for the heavy torpedoes or strategic missiles used by the Hresvelgr and the rest of the fleet.
"Wait… so the fighter wings and the Hresvelgr's strategic missile barrages are all one-use only now?"
"That's correct."
"…"
The realization that my fleet had, at the final stretch, become a premature-ejaculation force hit me with a wave of profound grief.
All-Stars — without you.
The Kraken's absurdly overpowered organic strike craft, the Hresvelgr's strategic missiles, the light carrier's fighters — every single consumable weapon system had just been reduced to a one-shot deal. Armed with that extremely valuable piece of information, I resolved that no matter who we faced, I was going to grit my teeth and give this last round everything I had.
Even our final trump card, the Naranja, was in rough shape — its signature weapon, the spatial torpedo, was a resource hog, and we had so few left we could barely even hobble enemy ships with them.
And then, the moment we dropped into the battle map—