Distress Call in the Began System
Tsspaaht!
A tiny flare of light burst open in the empty dark of space, and a transport ship punched through into realspace.
So this is a warp drive. What a strange sensation.
Jincheon, whose senses were finely tuned to ki, could feel that the warp drive was similar to the sensation of crossing from the Murim world into this one—yet distinctly different.
"Haaah~"
Calsira drew in a deep, satisfied breath, her face bright with pleasure.
"Finally free of that godforsaken empire. Even the air tastes different."
"We could run into pirates any minute, and you're talking like that?"
Heliane shot her a look of pure disbelief, but—
"Still better than those Zabalcan bastards. I was tense when you said we were heading into a lawless zone, but I never expected it to feel this liberating."
The same Calsira who had called them crazy for going to a lawless zone had completely flipped her attitude.
"Honestly, I never thought it would feel this good either. The relief and sheer freedom of being out of Zabalcan territory is stronger than I imagined."
She even closed her eyes and gave a full-body shiver of pure happiness. Heliane's expression turned utterly blank. She had never imagined Calsira would enjoy it this much.
"Space…"
Meanwhile, Jincheon—seeing the cosmos with his own eyes for the first time—stared through the reinforced cockpit glass with an uncharacteristically dazed look.
Finally… I've finally made it this far…!
He had started with nothing but his bare hands and now possessed his own dedicated ship, sailing through the stars. The realization that he could at last enjoy this sci-fi world made the corner of his mouth twitch; he could not hold back the smile.
From here on they would roam the vast universe and crash headlong into every kind of trouble. What truly set his heart racing, though, was the knowledge that if this transport ship were destroyed, he himself would be in mortal danger. The taste of death's edge brought tension and the raw thrill of being alive, making his heart hammer wildly. How long had it been since he last felt this kind of edge?
"Now we head to the outer edge of the system and catch a hyperlane to another star system, right?"
Beyond the outer reaches of a star system lay hyperlanes—points for superluminal jumps to other systems. The choices open to Jincheon's group were either to hole up somewhere for a month waiting for the warp drive to recharge, or to ride a hyperlane out of the lawless system entirely. Fortunately the systems surrounding the Began System had relatively established security, so it did not matter which way they went.
"Don't even think about taking the shortest route. Whatever's efficient for us is efficient for the pirates too. First priority is confirming exactly where we are."
Heliane, who had the most experience in space, began checking their position and weighing which exit to take.
"Hm?"
Jincheon suddenly turned his head to the right, brows knitting.
"I sense killing intent."
"Killing intent?"
"It's not aimed at us. Someone's under attack."
"What are you talking about…"
Heliane was about to ask for clarification when—
"Huh? Distress signal. Coordinates are…"
Calsira, manning the sensors, locked onto the distress call and updated the three-dimensional map. Coincidentally, the position was almost exactly the direction Jincheon had been looking.
Coincidence… right?
The coordinates Calsira gave were more than four thousand kilometers away. And he had sensed someone being attacked from that far?
"What should we do?"
Heliane's stray thoughts were wiped clean by Calsira's question. Answering a distress signal was basic courtesy among spacers. But pirates also used that courtesy as bait for ambushes.
"We go help them."
Jincheon made the decision as if it were nothing.
"It's not a decision you can make that lightly. Especially not in a lawless system."
"Exactly why."
"Huh?"
When Heliane pushed back, Jincheon calmly laid out his reasoning.
"In a lawless zone, who the hell answers a distress call when you're under attack? That means whoever sent this signal isn't from around here."
"That part's true enough… but that still doesn't mean we have a reason to help."
"Why not? Anyone here actually have credits on hand?"
Jincheon turned his head toward Calsira as he spoke.
"Not even one credit."
"…Same."
They had been given basic supplies, but not a single credit. Calsira was broke. Heliane had poured every credit she had into resistance supplies. Jincheon had managed to scrape a little together, but after paying for mecha piloting, ship handling, maintenance skills, and every other scrap of knowledge and technique, he was down to thirty thousand credits total.
"Normally I wouldn't bite on the cliché of rescuing people under attack, but right now we need money. We'll take whatever work we can get."
Space stations had countless docks, each sized for different classes of ship. Daily berthing fees scaled with ship size; fail to pay and the entire dock was seized until you paid up just to board your own vessel. On top of that they needed food, water, spare parts—everything—and they only had thirty thousand credits. If they did not find work within three days they would be kicked out to drift in space, or the ship would be impounded.
"And if they say they have no credits?"
"I don't know why they came out here, but they sure as hell didn't come empty-handed."
In that case the saviors who drove off the bandits would simply become the new bandits.
"We're moving."
Jincheon took the controls and pointed the ship toward the distress signal.
Kuuung! Kwaang!
"Aaaagh!"
"Damn it! The engines are hit!"
"What the hell are those mercs doing?!"
"They all died the second they launched—how long ago was that?!"
"Shit! I told you we should've hired real mercenaries!"
Inside a freighter converted from a cargo hauler, assorted aliens screamed curses at one another while desperately trying to keep the collapsing ship together. The hired mercenaries had all been wiped out, and the defensive weapons they had installed for self-protection were all wrecked. Outside, seven mismatched mechas were attacking just hard enough not to destroy the freighter outright, while a destroyer-class ship blocked every escape route.
"Cap! We have to surrender! If we stay like this we're all dead!"
The green-skinned alien at the controls—kindergarten height with oversized hands and feet—shouted, face full of panic. He shortened "Captain" to "Cap."
"No! If we fail this job, even if we survive here we'll have to face the Jotala Family's hunters!"
The reply came from a lizardman who looked like a perfect half-and-half mix of reptile and human.
"Fuck! I told you the money was too good—it felt cursed!"
"This time the feeling was right, damn it!"
They bickered while desperately weaving the freighter, taking the mechas' attacks as lightly as possible. But with the engines crippled, their escape routes were completely cut. Their only options were death or surrender. Fate chose the latter for them: the mechas' attacks stopped and a transmission came through.
A lion-headed man with half his face seared by laser burns bared vicious fangs as he delivered the threat. He belonged to the Tucan race—already one of the more aggressive species in the galaxy—and the laser-scarred face only made him look more savage. Every crew member on the freighter turned their eyes toward their captain.
So this is as far as we go.
No matter how he looked at it, there was no way out. The lizardman was about to sigh and declare surrender when—
Kwaaaang!
"Urgh?!"
"Kh?!"
A laser from somewhere punched clean through one of the mechas surrounding them and detonated it.
"Wh-what?!"
"Reinforcements?"
"Did the Jotala Family send them?"
The freighter crew lit up with sudden hope. More lasers streaked in from the distance, punching through the torsos of raider mechas that were desperately trying to evade. Seven mechas became four in an instant. One of the freighter crew magnified the direction the lasers had come from, and every eye locked onto the screen.
"Huh? Is that…?"
"That's a Gareld!"
"Has the Jotala Family gotten strong enough to field high-end machines like that?"
The Gareld sat at the absolute top of C-class performance. Its balanced design and raw capability let any pilot play to their strengths, so only ace-level pilots usually sat in one. Three of them appearing at once was enough to rattle anyone.
The raiders decided they could not simply run. The destroyer carrying their captain swung its bow toward the Garelds. Lacking beam weapons, the destroyer opened up with missiles and large-caliber main guns. The three Garelds flying in triangular formation split left and right, weaving through the barrage.
"Anti-air defense! Don't spare the ammo—pour everything on them!"
The moment the Garelds entered range, the captain in the destroyer's CIC ordered a full anti-air barrage.
Tududadudadudaduda———!
The remaining mechas joined in, hammering solid-shot weapons without restraint, trying to land even one hit. The two Garelds that broke right performed textbook evasion. The one that broke left, however—
"What the hell is this bastard?!"
—was performing maneuvers that simply should not have been possible. High-speed evasion was normal, but excessive speed actually made you harder to hit only up to a point; beyond that the targeting systems could not keep up with the rapidly changing vectors and the machine's own velocity. Sustaining that kind of speed also meant enduring crushing G-forces. Yet the Gareld that had cut left ignored G-forces entirely, flooring the throttle and dancing through the destroyer's barrage and the mechas' fire at insane speed. Then it banked in a clean, elegant arc, laser rifle already in hand, and came screaming back in.
"Crazy bastard! Die!"
The two mechas covering the destroyer's left flank opened up with rail machine guns.
Pichuung! Kwaang!
The accelerating Gareld put a perfect laser round through one mecha's torso and detonated it.
"In… insane! At that speed?!"
The remaining pilot panicked and sprayed fire, but the Gareld kicked its thrusters to full and climbed straight up, vanishing from his sights. Unlike the Gareld's full 360-degree screens, the older mecha relied on a forward main screen. The pilot hastily reversed and checked above.
"Gone? Where did it—"
Beep-beep-beep!
The main monitor flashed a warning downward, but—
Puhng!
—he never registered that a laser had already punched up through him from below. He and his machine became ash in the explosion. Using the three-dimensional nature of space, the Gareld had climbed, then dropped underneath and fired straight up through the enemy's torso.
Puh-pung!
At the same moment the other two Garelds casually finished the remaining mechas and opened fire on the destroyer itself. External armor plating had been added to boost the destroyer's defenses, but it was still an outdated hull, and the Calsorn Empire laser rifles—superior even to modern models—punched clean through the hull.
Kwaaaang! Kwang-kwang-kwang!
"U-uaaah! Help me!"
"Th-this can't be…!"
Explosions rippled through the destroyer's interior as the lasers punched through again and again. The captain could not believe what he was seeing.
"Who the hell are you people?! The Jotala Family couldn't possibly have this kind of power! Who are you?!"
His voice never reached the Gareld pilots. After eight laser penetrations the destroyer simply detonated, scattering debris in every direction.
"We… we're alive…?"
"We're alive! We're actually alive!"
"Holy shit! We actually made it out of that!"
"Cap! Your gut was right after all!"
The freighter crew cheered and celebrated their survival. The lizardman captain's face, however, showed no sign of relaxing.
Who the hell are they? If the Jotala Family had pilots and Garelds of that caliber they would have expanded their territory long ago.
At first he had assumed they were reinforcements sent by their employers, the Jotala Family. The overwhelming firepower they had just displayed made him shake his head.
Maybe we dodged a Drel only to run straight into a Bekun.
It was the local equivalent of the Terran saying about fleeing a wolf only to meet a tiger—using the names of beasts from his homeworld. The existence of similar proverbs everywhere suggested that people thought the same no matter where you went.
The three Garelds swept the area, confirmed no further hostiles, and approached the freighter.
"We hear you. Who are you people?"
The lizardman answered as politely as he could when the lead Gareld opened a channel.
"Mercenaries?"
They had broadcast the distress signal hoping any nearby Jotala Family ship would pick it up. Apparently it had summoned these people instead. The odd part was the faint, unmistakable thrill of excitement visible on the face of the man who appeared on the comm screen.
"Th-thank you. How can we ever repay this debt…"
At that moment the lead Gareld raised its laser rifle and leveled it at them.
"…"
At the naked threat, the lizardman was certain a "Bekun" had found them. He rubbed his throbbing temples.