บท 61: Chapter 59: The Phoenix and the Reaper
Swirling within the deep dark cold quadrant of the Lawless Maw Zone was Astral and her crimson red ship. Alongside the crimson-red ship were several derelicts just resting in the deep, debris floating around. The ships all seemed to be of different sizes with different motifs and themes, indicating that the derelicts are of different cultures or factions. Astral assumed that this place was the graveyard of ships engaged in battle— either in the near or distant past. Her ship moved around the graveyard with Astral herself keeping an eye on her radar and several other monitors.
Astral's main focus was currently on a monitor to her right. On the monitor contained information and feedback from her drones exploring the largest derelict in the area, a large hulking mass the size of a battleship. Although called a battleship, the remnants of the ship itself looked nothing like what a battleship would look like. The large gigantic pieces of metal alloys were torn apart like it was ripped in halves by two gigantic hands. What was left of the two halves looked to be further damaged from what looked to be an internal explosion. Weird broken craters filled the hull of the ship. Other ships in the area also contained a similar pattern of weird broken craters formed by an internal explosion.
Her various search drones explored the corridors of the broken ship as the crimson-red ship was too big to traverse the inner part of the battleship. Any video feed, soundwaves and other mysterious anomalies were transmitted towards her screen in a small but digestible summary. Astral quickly scanned through these summaries, looking for clues or anything relevant to the relic that she has been searching in this sector for so long.
Out of all the information fed to her, Astral managed to siphon out a few notable things. One was that no bodies could be seen within the graveyard at all and two was that the ships contained emblems and flags of ships from Freedom United and the Dawning Star Empire. One of the emblems in question were emblems that only came into existence just that year, cancelling out the theory that it was a battle that happened ages ago.
'These ships… Did Dawning Star and Freedom United have a battle against each other recently? There seemed to be quite the damage to this battleship, however...' Astral thought to herself.
She turned to look around the graveyard before noticing something odd. At first she thought the remains in the area were simply the results of some engagement or battle. However, looking at how every single ship in the area was damaged in the same way it might not have been a battle at all. Rather, there could be a chance that the ships in the area were all destroyed and carried to this location by the same… thing.
'What could be strong enough to do this though? An unknown army? No, if there was another army moving around the zone, I would have known about it. If that's the case what could have possibly happened here? What could have done so much damage to this many ships?' Astral thought to herself as she continued to monitor the area.
"Heh. Maybe I'm just thinking too hard," Astral muttered. Though, her hands stayed on the two joysticks that controlled the ship, ready to pull the trigger. She then increased the energy output towards her radar and detection systems. It was not of her to let her guard down, after all.
Astral's wariness paid off as at this moment, her radar started going crazy. What was once just a blank radar screen showing the location of the derelicts, was now a screen full of red dots. Her ship went into red-alert and her cockpit transformed to display a 360-degree view around her. The full omnidirectional camera showed a plethora of missiles coming right at her.
"What the?! Phoenix, deploy chaffs and engage point defence systems!" Astral yelled as she pulled the joysticks hard, attempting to make an immediate manoeuvre across the battlefield. Her thrusters flared up and her weapons systems activated, dozens of red lasers thread the battlefield, shooting down the missiles before it reached Astral. Any missiles that managed to get past her defences locked on to the various pieces of flare like objects ejected from the crimson red ship. The missiles hit the chaffs before exploding behind Astral as she advanced out of the area. The missiles exploded, making the whole thing look like a fireworks display.
However, the red dots on the map didn't let up as more and more missiles appeared out of nowhere to bring the crimson-red ship down. Astral proceeded to avoid these missiles in the same manner before scanning the immediate area to find the perpetrator of this ambush. Despite her best efforts, it would amount to nothing as she could not see anything in the area, not even the location of where the missiles are coming from. That and the fact that all the hulking ships and the debris in the area disrupted her radar and sight, making life even harder for Astral.
It didn't take long before she would know the identity of her attacker though.
"You won't be finding what you are looking for in this place, red phoenix," a cold voice belonging to a girl came out of Astral's communication's system. With the voice came an image of a girl with short black hair. She wore a cap that covered one of her eyes and her other visible eye contained no more emotion than a dead rat.
As she spoke, a swirling hole of energy appeared at a location some distance away from Astral. From this energy hole appeared a black ship with the emblem of a skull. It was destroyer sized, about 600 meters in length.
"You… you are that ship from—" Astral said to her. Though her words were cut short when the ship fired a few rounds from her guns. The rounds from the shot then exploded before splitting into hundreds of shrapnels, all of which flew straight into Astral's path. The shrapnels itself didn't seem like it would do a lot of damage to Astral, but her instincts tell her that she ought to dodge them.
Astral clicked her tongue before going into full focus, manoeuvring her ship so beautifully, dodging each and every piece of shrapnel. The ship went through the gaps of the attack like a leaf weaving through obstacles as it fell down to the ground. Once she avoided the attacks, Astral charged up her weapon before launching a large laser beam towards the black ship. The beam was larger than the crimson red ship itself and would no doubt deal a lot of damage. This attack, unfortunately, missed as the black ship retreated into the swirling energy hole, disappearing from existence.
The battlefield went silent for a short moment. No missiles nor red dots could be seen on Astral's user interface. Unfortunately, that silence would not last long as another message came from the black-haired girl.
"Astral, the red phoenix. Your reputation precedes you. Any normal person or ship wouldn't have been able to dodge that attack," the girl said as Astral's map once again filled up with red dots. The swirling energy hole appeared again and the black ship, now in an entirely different location, shot her weapon towards Astral.
Astral once again activated her point defence system and avoided the shrapnels by accelerating towards one of the derelicts in the area, using it as cover. She weaved through the graveyard of ships before arriving at an ideal spot to launch an attack towards the black ship. Once again, Astral fired the large laser towards her opponent and once again, it missed as the ship retreated into the hole of swirling energy, disappearing.
The black ship would then be silent for about a minute before appearing again, shooting at Astral from an entirely different location than before. This shrapnel attack would often come with a plethora of missiles that would seemingly come out of nowhere as well. Astral, like before, dodged the attack before launching her own counterattack.
This pattern of the black ship appearing and disappearing, and Astral dodging before attacking repeated for quite some time. About five to ten minutes passed with neither side attempting to shake up the flow of the battle.
"I'm getting tired of this. If you aren't going to fight me honourably then you ought to not even bother," said Astral. Her enemy was clearly playing around with her at this point.
"Do not mind me. I am simply collecting data on your capabilities," the black-haired girl responded, continuing her assault from thin air.
"Data? This is a rather roundabout way of doing so," Astral said as she continued to apply evasive manoeuvres. "I'm not really doing anything more than just dodging your pathetic attacks."
"All the ships here called themselves elites, but they were nothing but pushovers. Both Dawning Star and Freedom United are fools to think they could send these weaklings to contest this battlefield. Compared to the participants in that previous battle, they might as well be trash."
Astral kept silent, not knowing what to reply to the girl. She then looked towards her user interface.
[Time before jump: 4 minutes]
"I destroyed these ships, carried them here and made it in such a way that people like you would eventually stumble upon the graveyard. Do you like my little gift?" the girl said.
"..."
"By the way, don't you think it is weird? Several nations worth of manpower to search this entire zone and yet the relic hasn't been found yet. Space might be huge, but surely it must have been spotted by now," the girl continued. Her face remained stoic, but her words carried very mocking tones of sarcasm.
'What is she even achieving by telling me all of this.' Astral thought to herself.
"What do you want, kid?" Astral asked the girl.
"The name is Sensenmann. It's on the nametag that I proudly display alongside my face," Sensenmann replied before moving her hands to emphasize the tag on her right chest pocket. "My goal is simple, I am here to simply prevent the relic from falling into the wrong hands."
"Well, sorry buddy, but you ain't getting any information out of me. Go find it on your own."
"I don't think you understand. I don't care about the relic. As long as it is out of the hands of the large nations, I nor my higher-ups care," Sensenmann said as she finally ended her assault on Astral. Though her ship itself remained unseen. "You could have the relic for all I care."
"What are you trying to get at here?" Astral said, turning off her thrusters, her hands still on the controls of her ship.
"I propose a deal."
"Deal?"
"My opinion, but I have doubts about the existence of this so-called relic. Rather than wasting my time with the wild hunt, I am instead moving towards completing my secondary objectives. One of the said objectives involves the destruction of high profile Freedom United ships. I think you understand, right? In exchange for helping out, I will share with you all the information that I have about the relic. That would include all the cores that I ripped out of the losers around you. I'm sure you would know, Living Cores are a very valuable commodity in this galaxy."
"That's a bad deal. I refuse."
"I see. I will leave the offer open in case you ever want to come back to it then. Farewell, red phoenix, we will meet again," Sensenmann said as communications cut off. No more attacks came upon Astral. However, Astral didn't let her guard down.
'Tsk, what the hell…' Astral thought to herself as she scratched the back of her head. 'That girl talks like a villain. I wonder if she's a Living Core with a bad personality installed…'
At this moment, Astral received an encrypted message. Astral didn't waste any time and immediately went over to touch her U.I. to open the message. Inside was a very short and simple letter.
[We need to talk. Something about your leftovers.
-Dr. J]
"Oh wow. Just one after another. What does that girl want now… Phoenix, set jump coordinates towards a random coordinate. After that calculate the coordinates towards the Abigail E. Eternity."
[Jumping now]
"High profile Freedom United targets, huh," Astral muttered as she looked towards the destroyed hull of a Freedom United battleship in the area.
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