Bound for the Began System
Three months had passed since then.
In that time, the three of them had drilled endlessly in the training grounds until they were completely at home with the Gareld. Jincheon, meanwhile, had spent the same stretch overhauling both the mecha and the transport ship, turning theory into practiced skill until his maintenance work reached a level any outfit would pay a fortune to recruit.
Of course, he could not handle every repair alone. Calsira and Heliane needed to be able to service their own machines as well. Fortunately, Calsira had never trusted other mechanics enough to leave inspections to anyone but herself, and Heliane had long since learned to keep a mecha running with her own hands in harsh conditions. With Jincheon teaching them in ways that accounted for their physical capabilities, both women reached the point where they could maintain and repair their units on their own — short of catastrophic damage.
Busy days blurred together until only a month's worth of food remained, and the same thought rose in all three minds at once.
We have to leave.
Stay any longer and shortages would become a real problem. Jincheon raised the subject first. Calsira and Heliane agreed without argument, and preparations to leave the planet began.
They gathered every useful essential from the base and stored it in a crew cabin they had converted into a cargo hold. On the morning of departure, after breakfast, Heliane sat alone in the lounge, staring at nothing.
"What's wrong? You look off today."
Calsira took the seat across from her, concern plain in her voice. The old awkwardness between them was long gone — not after they had stripped bare for each other, caressed each other's bodies, and ridden the same man together, moaning without shame.
"I thought I'd made peace with it. But now that we're actually leaving, my chest feels tight."
"Is it because you still want to fight the Zabalcan Empire? Then tell Jincheon. His personality is a complete pain in the— ahem — extraordinary, but he keeps his word. He already said he wouldn't stop any woman who wanted to go…"
"Even if I went, it would be the same days over and over. Fighting until Zabalcan falls. The same days, forever."
It sounded bleak just to hear it — and yet that was exactly what Heliane herself had wanted. So why did it trouble her now?
"I talked to Jincheon about this once. He told me that if that was what I wanted, fine — he'd even send a Gareld with me. But,"
"But?"
"He asked what I planned to do after."
"After… after Zabalcan falls?"
"Yeah. If the Zabalcan Empire really collapsed, what would I do next?"
Heliane's face darkened.
"I couldn't answer him. Until now, all I've ever focused on was bringing down the Zabalcan Empire… and killing you."
Calsira took the mention of her own intended death without flinching and waited for Heliane to continue.
"From the moment Zabalcan declared war, I lost my life."
"But your hatred for the Zabalcan Empire is real, too."
"It is. That's why my chest feels so tight. Is it all right to leave Zabalcan as it is and go looking for a new life? I haven't even properly avenged my father. Can I just give up like this?"
The "father's enemy" she meant was not Calsira herself, but the Zabalcan Empire that had wielded Calsira as a weapon. Heliane was torn between a new life and a life of revenge.
Jincheon did not hold a woman who wanted to leave, even after he had once subdued her. He simply decided the bond was not there, and let her go.
Calsira thought for a moment, then offered an answer to Heliane's dilemma.
"This might sound strange coming from me, and it might invite the wrong kind of misunderstanding… but the Zabalcan Empire won't last."
"…What?"
Heliane's expression asked how she could possibly know that. Calsira went on.
"As a member of the imperial family, I ran into my siblings often enough. They all share the same ambition — crush their enemies, force them to submit, and let Zabalcan rule the galaxy."
That much anyone could have guessed. What came next was the point.
"Zabalcan is strong, yes — but the galaxy already has plenty of great powers. Elbania, for example. Or the Dragonians."
The Elbania were the race Terrans once called elves, and they had claimed one of the prerequisites of any true superpower: a military base of the ancient Calsorn Empire. Rather than use that technology to invade others outright, they had shown just enough force and then built a vast federation under the pretext of protection — a federation whose name, in their own tongue, meant harmony: the Taizan Federation.
In practice, Elbania had already seized every prime world rich in strategic positions and rare resources, securing overwhelming technology and abundant wealth. The member states of the Taizan Federation were half-vassals in all but name. At first they had no choice — they could not match Elbania's tech or military might. Later, they could not leave because of the benefits the federation brought them.
The Terra Federation was one of those member states.
Elbania had played it shrewdly. Outside powers that resented them were cowed by the sheer size and scale of the Taizan Federation. Inside, any discontent was quietly undermined so that member states could never unite against them. Of course, backroom maneuvering alone would not hold forever, so they made sure the member nations still received enough profit to stay. As long as that profit existed, no Taizan state would break free of the Elbania Republic.
Then there were the Dragonians.
The Dragonian Empire was the strongest empire in the galaxy, because every individual among them was exceptional. Superior intellect had brought them closer to Calsorn technology than any other race, and their technical prowess showed it. Superior physiques let them endure higher G-forces, so they could pilot higher-performance mecha; superior dynamic vision and judgment meant even an ordinary Dragonian pilot matched the specs of another nation's near-ace.
Unlike Zabalcan, however, they chose to rule through dignity and benevolence, turning other nations into vassals. These were not colonies stripped of resources while their economies were left to rot. Vassals were allowed to grow through imperial technology. Feeling the benefits of Dragonian tech and favor, those states gained more than they gave — and independence would only make them less secure and less comfortable. So they chose vassalage of their own will.
Two empires, two methods of dominion.
And Zabalcan?
"But Zabalcan is different. They trample, occupy, and enslave. The number of slaves will only grow. It may hold for now, but once their territory expands, internal problems will start."
When a state was small, forced labor was easy to manage. When the state grew and the slave population swelled, everything changed.
"And even if the anti-Zabalcan coalition falls, it won't matter. Zabalcan declared war without any real justification, pure force of will. The nations that never joined the coalition will watch Zabalcan thrash around internally, then declare war the same way and attack."
Heliane looked startled — she had never thought that far. Then something else seemed to occur to Calsira, and her face twisted with anger.
"Back when I still felt loyalty to Zabalcan, I talked about this with my siblings. Every one of them said it was nonsense — that the might of great Zabalcan would simply crush everyone into submission."
"That bad?"
"If the people who will lead the next generation think like that, it's already over."
"But how can they think that? Anyone who's looked at another race's history even once would know better."
Through a Bio Device and the galactic network, other races' histories were trivial to look up. And yet, with those histories sitting in plain sight, they still behaved this way?
"I raised that point too. They said those other races failed because they were idiots who lacked a systematic approach. That was when I realized Zabalcan has no future."
"…"
Heliane had known the next generation of Zabalcan were hardline militarists. She had not imagined they were this drunk on their own arrogance.
"The Zabalcan Empire will fall. Not from the outside — from within."
Having said her piece, Calsira pushed back her chair and stood.
"But if you still want a glorious death fighting Zabalcan — if reuniting with your father is the real goal — I won't try to stop you anymore."
"…"
The words reunite with your father snapped Heliane fully awake.
Father…
She had another choice now.
A life traveling the stars with Jincheon.
A life of becoming his woman under the fierce pleasure he gave her.
I'm sorry, Father. I'm going to live a life of my own.
Even so, she had no intention of scrubbing the grudge against Zabalcan clean from her heart.
If Zabalcan truly falls… then…!
When that day came, she would rejoin the anti-Zabalcan coalition, help bring the empire down, and return to Jincheon afterward.
Thanks to Calsira, Heliane now understood that fighting now would only mean dying without real revenge — a sad reunion with her father and nothing more. Resolve settled in her eyes as she left the lounge.
Departure time.
"Last check — everything packed? Nothing left behind?"
Jincheon sat in the transport's cockpit and asked the two of them if they had forgotten anything. In truth, everything that mattered was already aboard. The four Gareld units — one of them a spare — and the Calsorn laser rifles had been on the ship from the start. The nano-suits were on Calsira and Heliane themselves.
"Food and water are all scraped together and stowed in the hold."
"Essentials too. Everything worth taking is packed."
Over their nano-suits, both women wore one-piece military uniforms — red with white accents. Calsorn Empire issue, of course: a disguise to hide the fact that they were wearing nano-suits. Anyone sharp-eyed enough would notice these suits performed differently from ordinary ones.
Calsira handled signals and detection. Heliane sat in the co-pilot's seat, assisting Jincheon.
"Good. Engine start."
Using the master key from the captain's quarters, Jincheon brought the transport's engines online. He could feel the ship — dead for two thousand years — come back to life.
"All systems nominal… wait."
Heliane was confirming the transport's status when something on the displays made her frown.
"This is an old-model warp drive."
"What? Old-model?"
"What?"
Jincheon and Calsira both reacted with alarm. Heliane generated a three-dimensional map in front of her and pointed to a planet.
"This is our current world. And this circle is the range the warp drive can actually reach."
"Hold on. Let me pull up my own map."
"Mine too."
After checking the three-dimensional star chart, both of them opened their Bio Devices and called up the publicly released galactic maps every nation shared. Comparing those maps against the one recorded on the transport, Jincheon and Calsira arrived at two critical facts.
First: the maximum range of the transport's warp drive was ninety-five light-years.
Second:
"Almost every destination this warp drive can reach is either Zabalcan imperial territory… or a related conflict zone."
The entire usable warp envelope sat inside Zabalcan space or disputed regions.
"So that's why they left it behind."
The mystery of why this transport had been abandoned finally resolved. An average warp drive covered at least one hundred fifty to three hundred light-years. The top-tier models, even by Calsorn standards, reached four hundred fifty to nine hundred. A transport fitted with this outdated drive could never keep up with the rest of a fleet — so it had been left behind. With only training mecha like the Gareld aboard, and with critical pilots needing transport, one obsolete freighter had been judged expendable.
Jincheon and Calsira had checked that a warp drive existed. They had never checked how far it could actually go. That was their mistake.
"There's one place that isn't a conflict zone."
Heliane studied the map carefully, then pointed southeast.
"Are you insane?"
Calsira saw where that finger landed, scowled, and asked the question in complete seriousness.
"That's the Began System."
The Began System. An undeveloped star region with no notable resources. Precisely because no one cared about it, it had become a lawless zone — a haven for smugglers and pirate families. Going there took more nerve than most people had.
Chaining warps might have seemed like a solution, but after a single jump the drive needed a full month of cooldown. Force consecutive warps and you were looking at repairs at best, total destruction at worst. This transport was their property and their home. They could not abuse the warp drive.
"Still better than a conflict zone or Zabalcan space, if you ask me."
"That's… true, but…"
Flee while fighting a Zabalcan force unified under a single chain of command. Flee into a conflict zone where, without identification codes, everyone would treat them as enemies. Or flee among pirates scattered without any central order.
By any measure, the third option carried the lowest risk.
"If we have to fight anyway, pirates are the better bet. You really think pirate scum field proper mecha and armaments? If they did, the Began System wouldn't be called a lawless zone."
Jincheon shared Heliane's view. A lawless zone was not simply a place with bad security. It was lawless because even the pirates could not cooperate — each crew looking out for itself. If someone actually ruled it, it would not be called a lawless zone. It would be called that ruler's domain.
"We head for the Began System. Objections?"
"None."
"…None."
Jincheon set the course and asked for dissent. Calsira knew there was no other real answer, and nodded.
"Then we start the warp drive."
"All systems green."
"No anomalies."
"Good. All hands, prepare for warp defense. Warp engage."
The transport vanished the instant Jincheon activated the drive. The base that still held traces of the three of them settled back into sleep, waiting for the next visitor who might one day arrive.