Pirate Raid (3)
"That's right!"
"They hit on us first!"
And so on they went, spewing every grotesque, filthy innuendo they could invent.
Their thoroughly uncivilized pirate logic was enough to make even Jessica click her tongue in disgust — never mind the protagonist — but unfortunately, anyone who might have delivered a proper spiritual re-education had long since been jettisoned into the void by majority vote, or else had given up entirely and decided to just join in and enjoy themselves.
"We strip that base and we're headed straight back to our dear homeland! Wash our hands of this and take a nice long vacation!"
"Yeah!"
"Waaaaaah!"
"Enemy patrol ship spotted ahead! They're trying to attack us!"
"Hahahaha! What are they gonna do with just one ship!"
Having been completely oblivious until now, the patrol ship had scrambled out in a panic and was firing beams from well outside effective range. The pirates laughed themselves sick at the sight, cleanly annihilated the little vessel, and then — in no particular hurry — settled in for a proper round of plunder. Or rather, a "voluntary requisition of supplies."
Unlike their usual approach, all three ships shifted into full bombardment posture, determined to secure an overwhelming fleet-battle result.
That choice would deliver the absolute worst outcome any of them could possibly have imagined.
> BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP!
"Hey, hang on — what's that coming at us?"
"Missiles? The signature's pretty weak for missiles."
"Aaaaagh!!"
"Wh-what?"
"Crazy — this is fucking crazy!"
"Boss! Some insane woman just boarded our ship and she's cutting everyon—"
Slash!
No one could have seen it coming.
And at that same moment—
"Commander, Ignis has just boarded the rightmost vessel!"
"Okay."
I confirmed that the Ignis missile — mixed in among a few ordinary ones — had struck its target dead-on. Realizing this was the perfect chance to throw the pirates into chaos, I immediately shoved the patrol ship I was piloting forward and started drawing aggro.
Of course, I'd spent the better part of two days drilling ship controls around the clock. But fundamentally I was still a complete novice at the helm. Charging in to pull aggro like this would only get me surrounded and hammered by pirate crews who were far more competent and far better pilots than I was. My precious patrol ship would fulfill its destiny as space dust in short order.
Which was why I'd already worked out a way to beat those odds.
"Jessica, open fire with every defense turret on the base."
"Yes, Commander!"
I was putting the base defense batteries to work — the same ones the in-game community endlessly bashed as worthless, insisting you'd be better off converting them into items or raw resources. If the pirates were going to invade us, the least I could do was give them a slightly more novel experience.
"What the hell is that bitch!"
"Kill her! Kill her already!"
"Fuck, she's dodging every bullet — what are we supposed to—GAAAH!"
Wow.
Remembering how the original game used viewpoint switches to show characters in motion, I'd wondered whether something similar existed now that I'd been dragged into this world. Jessica had answered with a bright smile that of course it did, and handed me a terminal.
Through that screen I got a front-row seat to Ignis's one-woman show — no, a ultra-high-definition first-person action-slasher movie, completely uncensored.
After about a minute or two of watching—
"Urgh."
I shut the display off, fighting down the wave of nausea that had surged up while I spectated the pirates' live beheading-and-organ-recital special.
It wasn't that I had no tolerance for gore and was about to start wailing. The problem was that everything on screen was being fed straight from the action cam on Ignis's suit. Dual energy blades in both hands, spamming Hikami Kagura three times in a row — her deranged physical ability and mobility blended into something so extreme that the camera shake alone was genuinely unhinged.
From the perspective of a fragile ordinary person like me, the feed produced nothing but photosensitive shock and 3D motion sickness in equal measure.
So even though Jessica had gone out of her way to fetch the terminal, I powered it down for the moment and prepared to contact Ignis with a simple question: roughly how long would it take her to finish one pirate ship?
"Jessica, can we reach Ignis?"
"Yes — but she said not to contact her during combat unless it's an emergency. It's too dangerous."
Essentially the same as putting her phone on silent. A strange feeling settled over me.
So this is what it feels like to be the useless boss with an outstanding subordinate.
Before that thought could dig any deeper—
"Oh, and before Ignis left, she mentioned something."
"What?"
"She said clearing one ship would take thirty minutes at most."
"Hmm. Got it."
I nodded at Jessica's interesting report, then glanced at the holographic status window blinking in front of me — the one I'd set aside while watching Ignis fight — and pulled the command console back over.
"Alright. Then I should at least try to buy some time."
"You can do it, Commander!"
With Jessica's familiar cheer — the same one I knew from the original game — ringing in my ears, I took the controls and pushed the patrol ship forward.
Meanwhile, at that very moment, as our commander advanced with all the dignity he could muster—
Inside the newbie-slaughtering pirate fleet that drove both rookies and veterans equally insane—
"Gaaah!"
"G/R/A/A/A/A/GH!"
"V/A/L/H/A/L/L/A!!"
The spacefaring men who had set out treating this like a picnic — on the grounds that the base's only defense was a single patrol ship — or rather, the filthy, disgusting space pirates, were now in a full-blown panic at the sudden intrusion of an SS-grade Superhuman.
"Why the hell does a trash base like this have an SS-grade?"
It made sense. The vast majority of the raiding pirates weren't even D-grade — ordinary people, for all practical purposes. Officer rank got you somewhere between D and C. Ship captains finally hit C-grade. And the pirate lord, the so-called "Boss," was barely scraping the bottom of B-grade on a good day.
Against people like that, a Superhuman three full ranks above their Boss had just dropped in.
"Boss! How the hell are we supposed to stop that crazy bitch?"
"She's slicing machine-gun rounds out of the air. What are we supposed to do?"
"Ah, this game is fucking bullshit."
Pirate heads and guts were staging mass, heartbreaking farewells with the bodies they used to call home. Watching the carnage, the Boss sank into deep contemplation—
"Boss! Their patrol ship is coming out too!"
"…Ha. Those pathetic bastards dare?"
While one of his ships sat useless and the situation dragged, the base side had the gall to come at them with a single measly patrol ship. The Boss finally made his decision.
"Boys. We're writing off the ship that Superhuman boarded."
"What?"
"Then what about us?"
Naturally, the subordinates clustered around him pushed back.
"You idiots. Of course we smash that dumbass patrol ship first — the one charging us like we're a joke. Right?"
"Oh."
"What do you mean 'oh,' you fuckers!"
At the Boss's rapid-fire explanation, the dim-witted pirates only managed blank, vaguely agreeing faces. Given the nature of piracy, idiots were plentiful, and the Boss's insides were burning in real time—
"Hell yeah, that's our Boss!"