Chapter 335

Chapter 335

The Independent Anti-pirate Mobile Fleet left the Windas system and reached the frontier via gateway. Even though it was a remote area, it wasn’t that different from the place where I first met Mimi and Elma.

“How is this place different, My Lord?”

Krishna’s cockpit. Kugi inquired as she sat on the sub-pilot seat.

Since we were approaching Edge World, we prepared ourselves to perform an emergency sortie even while the Lotus was still navigating at superluminal speed.

“From here onward, we’ll be entering the Edge World, which is also described as the remotest area of the empire, and beyond it is unexplored space. This place isn’t actually near any borders with neighboring nations even though it’s on the edge of imperial territory. In other words……”

“In other words?”

“It’s the boonies.”

“Ahaha…… How blunt.”

Mimi laughs bitterly after hearing my explanation. Well, this place really was like the remote countryside with very few, if any, sights to see. Right now, it wasn’t strategically important, and no special resources have been found within it. In other words, that also means that there weren’t any planets suitable for humans to live on untouched. Unless there was a special reason like a shortage of habitable planets in the distant future, this system, which I believe is called the Vostok system, will continue to be a sleepy remote countryside system.

Well, as far as I can tell from the system information on the screen, it seems that there were no worthwhile resources that could be obtained here at all. However, it’s not like there were no resources. It’s just that those available were so common that they could be obtained practically everywhere else, so they weren’t exactly that competitive demand-wise. In the future, when the empire finally decides to develop the Edge World in earnest, this place will probably serve as a relay point.

“Actually, these kinds of star systems are prime pirate hunting grounds for mercenaries like us.”

“Is that so?”

“Because it isn’t close to any border, the number and overall quality of the imperial garrisons assigned here are very poor. That’s why space pirates find it easy to operate here. It’s a common pattern for pirates to use unassuming systems like this one as their base of operations and then worsen the public security of the neighboring systems.”

“I see.”

Kugi listened to my explanation with a lot of interest. However, places like this were also inconvenient for mercenaries because it wasn’t possible to keep your ships well-stocked and in good condition in such star systems. The Termaine system was also remote, but it still was part of a border with another nation, so there were plenty of imperial military forces deployed within it, and there were also ample weapons, ammunition, and maintenance facilities to service their military’s ships. But in truly remote star systems like this one, those facilities were exceedingly rare. Well, in our case, we still had Black Lotus so we wouldn’t have trouble maintaining Krishna in the short term.

However, the problem was Antlion. A mother ship that’s able to house a medium-class ship is part of the class of so-called capital ships. They were typically as large as an imperial military destroyer or as small as an imperial military cruiser.

The only mercenaries capable of operating ships of those sizes were large mercenary corps that usually had a mix of at least ten small and medium-class ships. That number was already overkill for us who only operate one small and one medium-class ship.

“Are frontier systems places with nothing to be found in them?”

“Oh, no, that’s not actually the case.”

“Is that so?”

I answered Kugi’s question, and Mimi followed up with a question of her own.

“I can’t say for certain because I haven’t seen our destination yet myself, but it should have enough facilities for a fleet of this size to dock. And merchants will soon gather in places like that. It’s safe after all. And when that happens, mercenaries and adventurers who are intent on surveying unexplored areas will also gather. In turn, more merchants will arrive to take advantage of those mercenaries and adventurers.”

“I see. That’s basically how trading colonies are formed, right?”

“Well, yeah. But it’s probably not complete yet in this case.”

“But how will the merchants conduct their trading if the colony isn’t complete yet?”

“They’ll probably make use of ‘that’, but it would be more interesting for you guys to actually see it for yourself. I’m sure you guys will be really surprised.”

I haven’t seen the imperial military, or rather, the Graccan empire’s version of『that』, so I was looking forward to seeing one myself.

The fleet rushed inside a hyperlane again as we chatted. We’ll be heading to the star system in question next, and since it will just take a short time to travel there through the hyperlane, we just waited inside Krishna’s cockpit as is. Meanwhile, Mimi and Kugi seem to have decided to study the handling of sub-systems together. I just listened to the two’s discussion quietly from the side. There were some parts that I could supplement and explain in more detail, but it’s important to learn things like that by themselves. Unless they were learning something obviously wrong, it was good to just listen in silently.

Even so, Mimi and Kugi seem to be getting along quite well, which was for the best. At first, Mimi was cautious around the other girl, so I was a bit worried. But judging from what I’m currently seeing, they seem to be on very good terms now. At least, in my eyes they were. I thought it was necessary to carefully keep an eye on the relationship between the two…… but Mei, who was piloting the Lotus from its bridge, contacted me.

『Master, we are about to arrive at the target star system.』

“Roger that. I don’t think we’ll encounter things like crystal lifeforms but stay on guard just in case. And please inform Elma too.”

『Understood.』

The transmission from Mei was cut off. Shortly afterward, I received a notification that Black Lotus had left the hyperlane and returned to normal space.

“We’ve finally arrived. There doesn’t seem to be any danger for the time being.”

I operated the console and checked out the data picked up by the sensors of the Lotus. For the time being, it seems no attack warnings or anything like that has been issued. Mei was able to analyze the contents of superluminal communication picked up by the subspace sensor and make a more reliable judgment, but that was far beyond a human like me.

The fleet reorganized itself, synchronized their FTL drives, and moved as a whole toward the center of the star system at faster-than-light speeds.

“The interior of a hyperspace tunnel is too chaotic and uncomfortable to look at, but the scenery while navigating at superluminal speed is interesting, or rather, pretty huh.”

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I personally think the sight of stars turning into flowing lines of light was simply beautiful. Swimming around the sea of stars like this made one feel a great sense of freedom.

“Eh? I think the inside of a hyperspace tunnel is also pretty, though.”

“Your sensibilities are really a bit off sometimes, Mimi.”

“Muu, how cruel.”

Mimi showed a glum expression as she pouted at me.

Well, Mimi’s basic common sense was fine, but her artistic or visual taste was a bit peculiar.

“Oops, it looks like we’re about to reach our destination. Alright, guys. Focus.”

“Did you just change the topic, Hiro-sama……? We’ll talk about this properly later.”

“Sure, if we still remember about it.”

I think she’ll get so surprised by the thing we’re about to see that she’ll forget all about such a topic though. If it doesn’t turn out that way, I’ll be in a pinch. C’mon Graccan empire. Please show us something amazing.

“FTL drive deactivating in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1……Now.”

The image sent back by the external sensors of the Lotus changed at the same time as Mimi’s count ended. The ship switched from FTL navigation to normal navigation. The stars returned from flowing lines of light into points again.

“Whoah, what exactly is that?”

“It’s big…… isn’t it?”

After confirming that we’ve returned to normal navigation, the image picked up by the external sensors of the Lotus changed several times until, finally, it projected the image of a gigantic object on the main screen.

It was a gigantic twin-boom starship. I haven’t really researched much about this class of starship so I couldn’t tell which manufacturer it was from at first glance, but it definitely was everything I expected it to be, and then some. It didn’t look like a new ship at all, at least in terms of external appearance, and its hull showed clear signs of age.

“That stupidly large ship is called a military supply mothership. It’s like a mobile base that’s able to carry a large number of supplies, equipment, and troops. It can also serve to resupply and maintain starships of various size classes – from small-class ones to large-class battleships.”

Although it was ridiculously gigantic, it should still be fully capable of both FTL and interstellar navigation. But since it was so big, it was really difficult to chart a course to places just within a single system.

“It’s bigger than the colony ships we saw back in the Comatt system.”

“Yeah. Well, they had about five colony ships filled with people back then, so in terms of the overall population, those ships still had more.”

“I wonder just how many people are able to live in that ship……”

Mimi had already seen colony ships before, so she wasn’t that shocked by the mothership, but Kugi was thoroughly impressed by just how ridiculously big it was. Her cute mouth was agape in surprise.

“We’re probably gonna stay on that ship for a while. I hope you get used to it fast.”

“Right.”

So, the name of this supply mothership was『Dauntless』huh. We’ll be staying over for a while. I hope the rest of the crew gets used to living inside it quickly.