Overload Detected
On board the Free Seagull, a voice rang out. "Hey, kid. Where are we right about now?"
The ship's youngest crewman, Pierre, scratched his head while staring at the radar for a long moment before shrugging. "I think we're almost there. We passed the asteroid belt earlier, and Nord is close by, so... another thirty minutes should get us to the supply port."
At the mention of thirty minutes remaining, the middle-aged man in the most honored seat stretched into a massive yawn and hurled an empty beverage can at the trash bin.
The can traced a long, perfect arc before dropping neatly inside. He pumped his fist with a small cheer, prompting the rest of the crew to shake their heads in collective exasperation.
"Captain, would you please knock that off? Have you already forgotten the time you nearly caused a disaster by hitting the control panel with one of those cans?"
At navigator Julian's protest, Free Seagull captain Joel slyly looked away. It had been about six months ago. One of Joel's thrown cans had accidentally pressed the gravity control button, sending the entire crew and every loose object floating through the ship. They'd spent the whole day cleaning up the mess.
The ship ran well, he took good care of the crew, and everything else was fine. The only problem was that playful streak. The man would be seventy soon. When exactly did he plan to grow up?
"Still thirty minutes? It's slower than I expected."
"The ship's old, so output is lacking. It looks well-made and the exterior is still decent, but this thing is forty years old."
"Ugh..."
At the explanation that nothing could be done about the ship's age, Joel groaned and stroked his bushy beard. He had known the vessel was old, and while they had overloaded it somewhat, the performance drop was far worse than anticipated. When they were cramming everything aboard, he hadn't imagined the output would fall this sharply. It might be time to replace her.
"But is this really going to be okay? We're overloaded beyond any hope of denial."
Pierre couldn't stop worrying about that part. Cargo ships overloading wasn't exactly rare. It was practically a time-honored tradition that predated humanity's leap into space. Even so, this felt excessive. The interior of the Free Seagull was now packed solid with ore. The cargo holds were full, of course, but so were the nearly empty food storage rooms, supply lockers, and even the conference room after they'd tossed out every table and chair.
The extreme overload had the Free Seagull practically screaming for mercy, resulting in the turtle-like crawl they were currently managing—less than half her normal speed.
"Plus, I heard pirates raised hell in the Garion System until recently. What if they run a strict inspection and catch us?"
It was a perfectly natural concern, yet no trace of worry appeared on Joel's face. Julian, who was notoriously meticulous, looked equally unconcerned.
Joel had come down from the captain's chair at some point. He clapped Pierre on the back with one massive hand, then rounded up every idle crewman.
"Our youngest seems pretty worried, so let's settle this. Anyone feeling anxious like the kid, raise your hand."
Out of twenty-one total crew excluding Joel and Julian, nine hands went up. Nearly half the crew felt uneasy, whether they showed it outwardly or not.
"The other twelve aren't worried? Why didn't you raise your hands?"
"Well, the navigator didn't say anything. If it was a real problem, he would've spoken up already."
"Then why aren't you worried that I'm not saying anything?"
"You already know the answer."
Joel smacked the cheeky crewman on the head, cleared his throat, and continued.
"It's true we've loaded enough to make anyone nervous."
The Free Seagull was a large cargo vessel that doubled as a small mobile mining company. Their work took them to undeveloped zones on the outer edges of star systems. They would land on suitable asteroids or rocky planets, mine ore veins, then return to sell their haul.
Over more than a decade they'd occasionally overloaded and dealt with all sorts of trouble, but never to this degree. The ship was moving like a turtle, after all. Yet this time they simply couldn't resist the temptation.
The vein they'd discovered was titanium. That alone would have brought better-than-average profits, but the small asteroid they'd found on the return trip held value that made titanium seem trivial.
The concentration was pathetically low, but the mineral inside was lunium—one of the five great magic metals and considered the finest grade. Its near-absolute resistance to external physical force and top-tier mana responsiveness made it a strategic material essential for warship main cannons. The low concentration didn't matter.
Lunium was a metal so rare it was always in short supply, and even tiny amounts were a top-priority strategic resource that the Federation would purchase at a premium.
In the end, the Free Seagull had carved out every section of the asteroid containing lunium veins and loaded as much as possible. They incinerated all the conference room furniture and discarded every food supply except long-term preservation rations. Even then it wasn't enough, so they had reluctantly abandoned part of the carefully mined titanium as well. Lunium was worth that sacrifice.
Filling every section of the Free Seagull with titanium ore wouldn't equal a single cargo hold of lunium. Yet they had four full cargo holds packed with it.
Though the concentration was low, this single trip would earn them several years' worth of income at once.
"Besides, we aren't carrying any illegal cargo. Everything we're hauling is titanium and lunium ore. Federation inspections aren't as strict as people think."
As Joel said, Federation inspections were primarily scan-based. Certain areas, including border regions, performed more thorough checks, but this was the Garion System—deep inside Federation territory.
Moreover, as a trade system, countless ships passed through every day. Performing detailed scans on all of them was impossible. The Federation had therefore abandoned manual verification of ship contents and instead maintained a list of illegal items, scanning simply to detect their presence. This method allowed even patrol boats and fighters to conduct inspections, making its efficiency unmatched.
"The people who usually get caught overloading are the idiots who panic and try to avoid inspection. They claim they're taking the shortest route and deviate from regular shipping lanes. If you submit openly, they won't have grounds to charge you with anything serious as long as you have no illegal goods. We take a standard inspection, proceed to port as quickly as possible, unload the cargo, and there won't be much evidence left. If questions arise later, we say we simply loaded too much, pay a small fine, and it's over."
When Joel finished speaking, every crewman's gaze turned in one direction. At the collective look asking if it was really true, Julian gave a nod. Joel grumbled that he didn't understand why they trusted Julian's word over his own, but no one paid the complaint any attention. You should have built up some credibility by now.
After a brief moment of playful grumbling at the small mutiny, the Free Seagull's crew exploded into lively laughter at the thought of the brilliant future the lunium would bring. If they had stuck to ordinary titanium or iron ore, it would have taken years to earn this much. They had every right to be excited.
Besides, Joel wasn't a stingy man. As company president and ship owner he would take the largest share, but he was the type to distribute generous bonuses to his employees.
Just how much would those bonuses be? Some pondered buying a new car with their savings. Others thought about contributing to their children's upcoming university tuition. While everyone was lost in such happy calculations, the Free Seagull arrived near Nord's second supply port.
"Whoa. That one looks brand new compared to ours."
"Must have been recently deployed. Not a single kill mark on her."
The warship displayed on the Free Seagull's forward panel maintained a sleek, mirror-like polish unlike any of the other military vessels they'd seen en route. As Julian noted, the complete absence of kill marks suggested it was newly assigned.
"But why is it sparkling like that?"
As someone asked, the warship's main cannon visible beyond the panel kept flashing continuously. It was near the gun, so it probably wasn't internal lighting….
"Beats me."
Neither Julian nor even Joel knew the source of that sparkle, but the answer was revealed soon enough. A unilateral transmission arrived from the warship whose cannon had been flashing.
The bright, youthful voice made every crew member aboard the Free Seagull break into a cold sweat. The same thought flashed through all their minds at once.
We're fucked.