Chapitre 63: Chapter 25: Test of Skill - Chariot
In order for Rydel's plan for his outlandish promise to work, a lot of things would need to fall in place, forcing him to use all of the skills that he has accumulated, and that involved the use of his artifact too.
No matter how hard he thought of an alternative, there just doesn't seem to be any other way. The very first stage of his plan would be to understand exactly what the White Hawks are going to do and when, and this would allow him to formulate various contingency plans and plot out his subsequent actions based on the actions of the Aquarians.
Thankfully, the recon droid has done its job flawlessly and stared transmitting the messages from the Aquarian main ship in no time. He would have to thank Valerie for her handy little invention after getting her back.
'The predicted time of intersection for the Chariot was altered three days ago, delaying the time by eight hours. But I don't trust it.' Within the meeting room that the recon droid has tucked itself into, one of the advisors commented with caution, and Rydel simply listened quietly.
'And we have our own servers for the simulations, which calculated the trajectory based on the original model, rather than the real time data.' Another one agreed, 'someone might have been manipulating the data itself to benefit themselves.'
You are damn right. Rydel thought.
'Or, the model could prove to be inaccurate.' Yet another commented on the other side of the argument, which at this point is equally valid.
'Can we not confirm the details with the company who ran the monitoring facility?' A deeper voiced Aquarian asked impatiently, from the way he spoke, it sounded like that he is the person in charge.
'No, Sir. They refused to offer further comment, which makes sense for those selfish humans.'
Yeah, Rydel agreed, it would do damage to their company's reputation if they either admit that their model is somehow wrong, the data they have collected before was inaccurate, or one of their satellites simply stopped working, so the best thing any selfish company would do is do remain silent.
'How convenient.' The leader complained, 'right, we will split half the forces. One half of them will perform the acceleration process required to catch up to the Chariot when it arrives according to the original prediction, while the other half will do it according to the new prediction.'
'Good plan.'
'Yes Sir!' And with that, the meeting is finished.
That's really good news for Rydel. With the confusion caused by the change in the model prediction, he has effectively halved the amount of enemy ships that he would have to deal with. Now, he just have to make sure the rest of his plans would work out exactly as he planned.
According to the real prediction, there isn't much more time until the Chariot arrives, so those that have decided to catch the Chariot this time around will need to begin the acceleration process sooner or later. The next stage of Rydel's plan would be to get inside the Chariot's asteroid cluster as soon as possible, and ideally before the big group of White Hawk ships does.
By carefully confirming the trajectory of the Chariot, Rydel then set a course for a starting point for his acceleration process. From that point onwards, a uniform acceleration would be able to lead him to meet the Chariot as it closes in on the intersection point. When he arrived, there is no other ship visible in this area, though his scanners do pick up a few ships on the edge of detection range.
'Now would be a handy time to have Cellica along.' Rydel thought, then he won't have to worry about finding the location of either others, or the Chariot itself. But then maybe it would get quite awkward in the ship if she is indeed here. A truly double-edged sword.
As he doubled checked yet again that his orientation is correct, Rydel then pulled the lever and began to accelerate gradually. Travelling in space is an incredibly strange feeling. One won't be able to feel a thing when you are moving at constant speeds thanks to Newton's Laws of motion, but at this time, Rydel do welcome the sensation of him being pressed back against the seat. It brings back certain memories.
The acceleration process should bring his speed to near Chariot's speed when they are nearing each other, from which point on Rydel would need to take care of the piloting of the ship manually, since nobody can really tell what exactly is going on within the clusters of comets. If he was lucky, then maybe he could even sneak away with ten tons of payload before anybody else arrives.
Without much warning, the sensors suddenly picked up millions of objects moving at incredible speeds going in a collision course with the ship.
The Chariot has arrived.
It wasn't long before Rydel can physically see the icy trails left behind by the comet clusters, and the flashes of light that comes in and out of view in the dark cosmic background due to possibly the rocks colliding with each other and shattering itself into even more smaller pieces.
The Chariot is here. And then Rydel realized he wasn't alone.
Despite him starting the acceleration process super early, his approach is much more gradual and comfortable. It appeared people from the other forces are a bit more aggressive in their approach, hence their starting point is a lot closer. By this point the sensors are borderline useless since the shear number of comets are starting to overwhelm to systems. Before the entire detection system crashes, Rydel had to adjust for the size of the objects being detected, setting a filter for the signals so that only those with a sufficient size that of a ship or bigger would be registered on the system.
This is merely a temporary treatment, however, as he got closer and closer to the Chariot, he realized that the comet cluster is a lot bigger and busier than he could have ever imagined. Even though he is still many kilometers away, the sight of the gigantic comets has already filled most of his view port and he has yet to see the end of it.
Instead of a single 'Chariot', Rydel felt like he was witnessing a march of one of the grandest armies in the entire galaxy, and now he would have to go in, and snatch away some of the members from this march.
It turns out this might be a lot more difficult. Rydel turned to look at the tracking device and the struggling scanners. It turns out the White Hawk's capitol ship is also one of the vessels within range, and there has already be at least twenty of them on this side of the comet only, and who knows about those on the other side.
Despite all the things they have done, Rydel realized that they would have only marginally decreased the difficulty of this mission. Perhaps they should have stuck with the original script?
Then, the scanner screamed out a warning sign of proximity alert and Rydel instinctively switched on the ship-wide shield generator.
A missile whizzed pass his ship and exploded not too far in front of him, the flash of light and fire stunned Rydel briefly before the rain of debris and shards bounced off the shields. Rydel turned to look at the scanners and turned on the rear camera, to see a battle beginning to commence. It looked like some of the ships from the Wolf Pack and the White Hawk has engaged in light skirmishes, and one of the missiles were aimed his way, as one of the fighting ships mistaken Rydel for one of their immediate enemies. But before another shot could be fired, or further confirmations could be made, another ship cut from the side and rained down a layer of fire on the ship that has just fired on Rydel.
'Cheers for that.' Rydel thought to himself, and then pushed his engine a little harder. The skirmishes obviously delayed the progress those ships are making, but it wasn't slowing them enough so that Rydel would be comfortable staying at the same pace. He had to go and scout the environments before he can execute the next stage of his plan.
Then the sensor beeped sharply, as several of the smaller fighting vessels branched away and broke off from the battle to speed towards Rydel.
'White Hawk Fighter three hailing the cargo cruiser. Please move aside to other areas for the mining process, or else we will shoot you down.' A voice came through the general communications channel, and it was a warning coming from one of the fighters.
'What the captain is saying is get the fuck away from our stuff.' Another one elaborated on the not so subtle threat, as they have their weapons locked on Rydel's vessel.
'Right, let's see what you have got...' Ignoring their message for now, Rydel quickly ran through a weapons check.. At least the cannons equipped within this ship is powerful enough to fight off some fighters, and then turned on the frontal cannons. It's time to put on a show now, Rydel thought that to himself, rolled his shoulders forward and backwards a few times to get loose and ready for a battle, and then activated his mic before speaking into the channel.
'If you are trying to threaten me, then you had better come prepared.'
And with that, the two fighters opened fire, and Rydel spun the ship around using only the gas nozzles to the side of his ship while maintaining his forward moving trajectory before laying down heavy barrages of fire. The powerful weapons output instantly tore through the shields of one of the fighters and forced the other one to veer off to the side to evade the incoming fire.
'And now you have done it. No matter who you are, the White Hawk will not forgive you.'
And with that, the fighter spun back around and tried to attack the flanks of Rydel's light cruiser, but Rydel immediately reacted to that and released a cloud of disturbance particles that clouded most of that fighter's sensors and viewing screen before firing a clean shot and destroying that ship. And now with that, he has definitely got the attention of the White Hawks.
Now its time to move on to the next phase of the plan. While making sure that a sufficient amount of ships are chasing after him, Rydel took the cruiser through a sharp left turn and started approaching the comet clusters.
The closer he got, the most he realised how chaotic everything is. Rocks and stones are constantly being thrown into each other, colliding and shattering the weak and ejecting shards at dangerously high speeds in all directions.
To be able to survive through this, Rydel would require every bit of enhanced processing power coming from the physiological enhancements as well as all the concentration he has, but fortunately, he has been practicing the methods of entering into a flow state on command, and without him truly realizing so, his artifact has been an instrumental part of it. Though he always practiced this while he was alone, so nobody actually picked up on it, and the only person that saw it, Roloni was too drunk to accurately remember what exactly happened on the day of the Pilotmania.
With his breath under control, Rydel gave himself a single second to cut off all of the distractions and unwanted thoughts within his mind, and focus all his power into a single task:
Survive and win.
Like a seasoned diver breaking into the water, Rydel flew his light cruiser into the comet cluster without any hesitation at a ridiculous speed. The fighters and other ships in pursuit hesitated for a split second, before pursuing him into the chaos.
If it looked like a stream of white water from the outside, then the chaos inside is akin to that of the turbulence underneath the surface. With the shields up at full intensity at the sensors adjusted to scan for the largest rocks around, Rydel swiftly pilots the ships around, spinning it and fluidly controls it to move around the incoming rocks and shards, avoiding most of the incoming projectiles. Occasionally, he would let some of the smaller rocks bounce of the shields, while making sure the bigger ways are either deflected or avoided.
With full body total concentration, his artifact reacted to his calmness and flow, and began to send pulses of energy to reinforce his focus, making his every single calculated move even more precise.
His pursuers aren't so lucky.
Things happen too quickly in the wild regions, and none of the pilots here today were here when the Chariot last arrived, and none of them had any idea how difficult it is to pilot ships with a small shielding capacity within the comet cluster. Even for someone like Rydel's who can increase his focus by utilizing the benefits of the physiological enhancements as well as getting a cheeky help from his artifact, it was difficult and he has to let the ship shield generator do its job at times. For most young budding pilots, flying in this kind of environment is just too much of a challenge.
Within seconds of entering, two of the fighters are already ripped to shreds by the flying shards and their shield generator did next to nothing to protect the unfortunate souls. The bigger cruisers were better, but the person flying it weren't nearly as skilled as Rydel and rammed their ship into one of the medium sized rocks while trying to evade an incoming rock.
The further Rydel went, the less of a threat his pursuers are, and soon, his scanner picked up on of the bigger rocks. This would be his first target.
In order for his plan to fully work, the first stage was to figure out the exact movements of the White Hawks, then he will dwindle down the forces of the White Hawk until there is only a handful of the capital ships that can enter the comet cluster without being destroyed by either him or the flying rocks. Then he will wait until the end of their extraction work to strike, eliminating everyone except the big capital ship, and somehow transport that over to a safe rendezvous point for the hand over.
The center part of the Chariot is like the wild regions of the wild regions, and Rydel hoped he would never have to do anything nearly this crazy ever.
In trying to get to the rock that he nicked named the Big Granny, Rydel has almost crashed his ship into an incoming rock before firing away through the cannons at the last minutes and smashing it away. But when it finally clears out somewhat, Rydel quickly turns the ship by ninety degrees and touched down on the rock.
Finally, with the Big Granny shielding the ship on most sides, there is a rare moment of silence and peacefulness.
If there were two people here, then they maybe could have mined the asteroid and gotten out of here, Rydel thought, it would have been so easy.
Then, almost like a direct response to his thought, the shadow of a giant capital ship, the flag ship of the White Hawk appeared from far beyond. The outline of it obscured by the flying rocks, and yet Rydel can already feel its menace. The powerful guns present on the giant flag ship easily clears out a way by blasting the bigger floating rocks into smithereens while orbiting fighters and light cruisers took on the smaller rocks on each side of it to prevent anything from getting through.
It was clear, concise, and effective. And it was merely half the crew, though the very fact that they are here means the other half won't be here on time no matter how fast they have arrived, but Rydel needed to make sure that when he attacks that ship, everyone else would be taken out by him, or killed for short.
There is no time for remorse, and there is no time for regrets. Rydel told himself when the disgusts that arises from having to take the lives of others for his own selfish reasons, there is only a job here, and I will have to do whatever it takes.
Perhaps I am doing this for the greater good, so that the evil of the Absolute Being won't spread across the galaxy? Or am I doing way more harm through my current actions than any possible good that would come from me taking Dolon back from the group?
Rydel didn't have much time to think through these important questions, and Cellica was never one to look through these either. When one is placed in this world and these circumstances, he found that he started to care less about the consequences of his actions on those that don't directly affect him.
Was that a lesson learnt in the Absolute Academy, or was that a part of him that's always been there?
Rydel wouldn't be able to tell, but he realized that it is something within him that he would have to confront sooner or later. But not now.
Now, he has a task to do.
The scanners picked up fifteen fighters and five light cruisers surrounding the main ship, so those would be his first target. With only the peripheral thrusters, Rydel switched it on and started spinning the Big Granny around so that he would use it as cover and delay the time that the capital ship would have spotted him, though there is an equally likely chance that he was already on the radar of the White Hawks.
Either way, a fight is about to happen, and Rydel is ready for it.
État de l’alimentation hebdomadaire
-- Classement
Power Stone 
-- Power
stone