An hour prior.
“Hmm?” Yoake hummed to herself when she caught something moving within the edge of her vision. It was like a small shimmer of red light that just appeared and disappeared quickly. She put most of her concentration on the location of the oddity but found nothing out of the ordinary.
Yoake was cautious about the situation though and rerouted power towards her detection systems. She then did a full manual scan of her surroundings— the action of which alerted her skeleton crew. They were the elite crew of the cruiser Hikari and living up to their name, without a single word being exchanged, immediately got into position, assisting Yoake and the scan of her surroundings.
The whole bridge was in a state of full silence for a good few minutes as Yoake and her crew scanned the surroundings via a variety of methods. One of them was doing a basic scan with her radar. Another one was looking through her camera to spot any oddities.
The silence was disturbed when one of Yoake’s crew, a man that looked to be in his thirties said out aloud. “It’s the blue shark!”
Along with those words, an image appeared in the bridge showing the blue shark drifting along in a location about less than a thousand kilometres away from Yoake. The blue shark had yet to detect Yoake’s presence and was laying low, deploying a round object of sorts in the distance. The ship itself was cloaked in a way, only appearing as nothing more than shimmering blue glowing light. If Yoake and her crew didn’t do their full scan, the blue shark would probably have escaped their notice.
Yoake took another look at the ship and felt a little bit curious. The ship that she spotted was no doubt in her mind the blue shark but she could tell that the ship was different. The ship that was in front of her sight now was a little bit bigger than the one that she saw in the previous battle at the dark side of the sun. Rather than a corvette size, the ship was now big enough to rival a small destroyer— a destroyer with several big guns. Still, it could be nothing more than an error within her instruments or her cloaking device, making the blue shark appear larger than it should be. It wasn’t a rare technology to be had.
“What do we do?” Another crew member asked.
Yoake, being inexperienced as she was, gave out her best expression saying ‘How am I supposed to know?’. It was unfortunate that towards her crewmembers, her expression was nothing more than an apathetic face. Yoake wasn’t that great at expressing herself just yet.
Still, she quickly gathered herself and attempted to contact her two direct superiors. The first person that she tried to contact was none other than Jinko herself who was probably in the middle of negotiations with the terrorist known as the Red Phoenix. She enabled herself a low frequency encrypted form of communications between her and her superior. A form of covert transmission, the best form of keeping hidden, second only to going dark.
She awaited her superior to receive the transmission only to be met with dead silence— other than the static noise of space, of course. Yoake was confused for a moment before concluding that Jinko must be busy and does not wish to be disturbed. Closing down the transmission, Yoake then attempted to contact her other superior, Hikari. However, this attempt was met with dead silence as well.
It was then that a crew member, the one in charge of the communications system, told Yoake: “Ma’am, I think there is to be some form of communication disruption in the general area. Signals can be sent but we are receiving next to nothing.”
“Another one of the Red Phoenix’s tricks,” Yoake muttered.
Another person said to Yoake shortly after: “Ma’am, the blue shark is moving away. She will be out of our detection range within ten minutes.”
“Your orders Ma’am,” another crew member said out to her.
‘...’ Yoake fell silent, unable to answer any of her crew. She felt lost at the lack of guidance from her superiors. It was rare that she would make a decision by herself. She closed her eyes and concentrated on balancing all the options in front of her.
Would she chase the blue shark? She had orders to contain the blue shark, after all. Then again, there was a chance that the negotiations went well enough that opening hostilities would just make things worse. Just following the blue shark while staying hidden wasn’t exactly a good option either due to the abundance of mines scattered within the area. Mines that the enemy would know their intrinsic location compared to Yoake which would have to manually detect. Plus, Yoake was bigger and much less manoeuvrable as compared to the smaller blue shark, making it harder for Yoake to catch up to her in the minefield.
Unbeknownst to Yoake and her crew who were too focussed on the blue shark to notice, another ship managed to sneak up on her from behind. The black and crimson red ship which was an abomination of boxes attached to each other appeared out of the vortex and shot at Yoake before she even noticed the appearance of the ship. Its three guns shot three green vile shells alongside a plethora of missiles towards Yoake. Almost all of the missiles and two of the shots were blocked by Yoake’s shield. However, the last of the green vile shell penetrated and landed right onto Yoake’s hull.
*Boom!
An explosion was heard within the ship as Yaoke winced in shock. The entire ship shook from a dense vibration originating from the impact, stunning everyone in the ship momentarily. Pain coursed through Yoake’s body as if she was stabbed at the abdomen. The pain didn’t just end there as it spread throughout her core. The shot that damaged Yoake’s hull spread out like some sort of poison and corroded the surrounding areas of the impact.
Yoake was quick to react and quickly deployed repair drones towards the damaged area. She rerouted all of her power and attention towards the newly appeared foe. Her guns were aimed right at the destroyer that somehow managed to sneak up on her— a black and red ship that was within striking distance.
However, before Yoake could fire back at the ship, it did a 360 degree manoeuvre and summoned another vortex. As quickly as it appeared, the ship disappeared into the vortex, disappearing from Yoake’s radar entirely as if it never existed. Taking a hit without being able to hit back caused a slight discomfort within Yoake. She felt a feeling that she couldn’t describe, tightness in the chest and the clouding of her mental judgement. She was feeling irritated.
Yoake however, was quick to regain her composure and shouted to the rest of her crew. “All hands on deck, red alert! Status report!”
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The bridge transformed into battle mode and her crew all tightened themselves to their battle stations. Damage control crews went over to the point of impact, the engineers went towards the engines and thrusters and her weapons systems. Meanwhile, whatever gunners she had, went towards her small hangar, controlling point defence turrets and the main guns.
“Impact on non-critical location of the hull. All systems functional. The damage seemed to be spreading! It’s… it’s eating through the hull!” One of the crew members yelled out towards a shipwide comms.
“The blue shark has noticed us, it is moving away from us!”
“Multiple shells and missiles approaching us from our left!” Another one shouted right after.
Looking towards her general left, Yoake could see a black and red ship with the emblem of a skull on it. It shot towards Yoake a number of green vile shells, the same shell that spread a substance that was eating through her own hull right then. Most of the shots seemed inaccurate and lacked consistency, but it was firing at a rapid rate. The inaccuracy of the shot didn’t matter much as, Yoake at that moment, was an immobile target, making it easier for the shots to land.
“The reaper…” Yoake muttered before clicking her tongue. She quickly engaged her thrusters and started to deploy evasive manoeuvres. Her point defence systems activated and started shooting down missiles and the shells out of the space. The area around herself lit up like a fireworks show.
Yoake quickly realigned her guns towards the reaper, Sensenmann. Her massive turrets rotated slowly as Yoake calculated her future shots through a series of simulations. It took a good twenty seconds before her turrets finished rotating. The individual guns on the turrets then took aim at the black and red destroyer, ready to fire.
However, before Yoake could even take the shot, a vortex appeared in front of the destroyer before sucking the ship into non-existence. The unknown sense of irritation grew within Yoake, making her impatient. She rerouted power to her radar in order to detect Sensenmann faster if she should appear. She then moved her turrets in such a way that it covered every direction.
“Ma’am, mines ahead!” One of Yoake’s crew members said out, shifting her focus from the destroyer towards the front of herself. She was too embroiled in her battle against Sensenmann that she failed to take into account the kind of battlefield that she was in. She could see round mines with laser pointers pointing towards herself. With small thrusters installed on the mines, it travelled hastily towards Yoake.
Yoake immediately poured power towards her directional thrusters to avoid the mines— strafing starboard. Despite her best efforts, she was still a cruiser and her manoeuvrability was limited. While able to dodge a number of mines, an even larger number of mines hit her shields. Even worse, some of the space mines, the size of trucks pierced through her shields and impacted her hull directly. Large sounds of explosions reverberated throughout the ship as it happened. Sharp piercing pains were inflicting on Yoake's consciousness. It was like being hit by a hammer on the back of her head. She could feel herself slipping away as a wave of dizziness was inflicted upon her.
“Ma’am, the destroyer has reappeared! Below us!” The sound of her crew member was what woke Yoake up from her daze.
She quickly reorganized herself, pointing whatever guns that she could towards Sensenmann. Sensenmann, having caught Yoake by surprise, picked a good moment to reappear. She was much faster than Yoake and had already aimed her guns towards the annihilation cruiser. Yoake noticed this and in an attempt to minimize damage, she quickly routed full power towards her shields and focused all of it’s deflection capabilities towards the general direction of the destroyer. Yoake eyes opened wide when she noticed that her shields were nowhere to be found.
“The shields are down! One minute before reactivation!” Her crew shouted out loud.
Yoake was a decisive person and immediately enacted a different plan. She immediately routed her power again, this time towards her directional thrusters. While an admirable attempt at trying to dodge the attack, it was too little too late. Sensenmann did her corrections and adjusted her guns.
Seeing this, Yoake clenched her teeth and prepared herself for a world of pain.
…
..
.
Although, no matter how long she waited, the vile green shells never fired out of Sensenmann’s guns. Instead, two large blue lasers— lasers with width large enough to engulf an entire fighter— appeared out of nowhere and hit the destroyer. One of the lasers hit the destroyer while the other merely went in between Yoake and Sensenmann. The one laser that managed to hit Sensenmann, penetrated her shields and obliterated the upper surface of the destroyer.
As if responding to the sudden attack, a vortex appeared and, once again, Sensenmann disappeared into the Abyss.
“Ma’am! We are receiving a transmission. It’s from the blue shark!”
Yoake was quick to assess the situation and immediately received the transmission. Much to her surprise, there wasn’t any communication. Instead, the transmission was merely a map, displaying the location of all the mines in the area. Alongside the map was a message that says.
“We just need to delay her. Help is coming.”