chapter 204

The ship that fired at us was well hidden. Our sensors couldn’t find it, but the AIs were good enough to trace back where the previous shot came from. Now that we knew the general area, we could focus our sensors, and finally, the red dot emerged.

In just moments, the turrets had a targeting solution. I could feel slight vibrations as the turrets fired, but only because I was so tied into the ship right now. They made so much less vibration than the projectile turrets we had before.

An image of the ship that fired at us was projected onto the screens around us. It wasn't a small ship. It was, in fact, a lot bigger than ours, but it seemed wrong.

It wasn’t that far away from us, and while it did try to dodge the incoming fire, it didn’t succeed.

"Incoming fire," an alert notified us all. The shield AIs were on point, blocking each railgun shot that came from the enemy ship.

Like this, we returned fire for almost 20 seconds, with dozens of salvos exchanged between the two of us. It also had quite strong shields, but our heavy light bolts were chewing through them.

When we started to hit their armour, I finally understood what made their ship look weird to me. It was trying to mimic quite a standard battlecruiser design with a cylindrical body and short wings at the sides, but most of the armour plating didn’t match each other, and the overall shape was a bit off, like it was put together from multiple different ships, and not that well.

The turret AIs didn’t miss this either, as they correctly assessed those connection points to be the weaknesses in the overall structure of the ship. This fight was about to be over.

"Captain, we're being hailed by them," FH informed me.

"Put it on screen, but don’t stop firing." It was rare to be able to get video from a ship you were fighting, as usually the distances were too long for that to be an option.

"We surrender. You have proved your point. Stop firing."

The alien on screen looked brown with greenish spots and quite humanoid, although there were some curious features like horns on the top of his head.

The thing that I didn’t like was that they weren’t humble or apologetic about attacking us. The voice that came through was almost commanding, expecting me to stop just because they said that they surrendered.

"We do not have the facilities to hold you, prisoner. Your surrender is not accepted." My cold voice sounded throughout the command centre, with the mic projecting it to the enemy ship.

Their facial expression changed almost immediately, which was strange. It should have still taken a couple of seconds for them to hear my answer. They had one chance for me to stop, but what they said next wasn’t that.

"You arrogant upstart, cease your attack, or you will feel the wrath…"

A simple hand sign cut off the feed to the enemy ship. All they had to do was show humility. No matter how angry I was, I would have stopped. Although I’m glad they didn’t. Who knows how many ships they had destroyed or boarded before us.

"Incoming fire," FH announced as alarms once again sounded off. We were now being attacked from multiple directions. The tactical screen changed, showing approaching ships. Only two had made it into range, but more were coming, although it was difficult to get an accurate count as there were so many wrecks around us constantly moving.

The longer we were here, the more we could filter out these wrecks. So that enemy captain wasn’t lying about bringing down the wrath upon us. They were probably trying to stall until their friends got here.

My eyes flicked through the heat buildup gauges. Everything was running optimally, even after all the railgun fire we had taken. FH's new skills were putting in the work. On another screen, FH was displaying communications that we were able to overhear between the ships.

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They seemed quite angry about what was going on. Without me having to say anything, those ship-to-ship communications were being disrupted by our electronic warfare. Those AIs rarely got to stretch their capabilities, but right now, we needed everything we had, as we didn’t know how bad the situation was.

An explosion silenced the battlefield for a moment as everyone stopped shooting at each other. The turret AIs had shot through one of the connecting points, exposing the reactor. Their end was quite quick and explosive.

The frontal shields strengthened themselves as much as they could. There was a shower of debris that spiked our heat quite a lot, as our shields needed to absorb a lot of hits.

The tactical screen paused for a moment and then refreshed, showing the changed tactical situation with the new cleared area where the explosion had pushed away a lot of debris.

Since there were now more enemies, each one was now named Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and so on. We were up against 10 ships, each one seeming to have strong shields and that same weird design of cobbling together ships that look like a warship roughly the size of a battlecruiser.

Their armaments seemed to only be railguns, and not particularly strong ones. Although that was relative because before the shield upgrade, they would have torn through us.

“It seems that this place needs some cleaning,” I said out loud as we prepared for a longer battle.

FH was pulling from us, making our ships even stronger, as we returned an ungodly amount of fire against the ships that were trying to destroy us. The cold ruthlessness I could feel from the turrets as they picked apart the ship currently designated as Alpha felt good.

More enemy ships had made it into range. Altogether, there were now six ships in range, and more were coming, but they were further away. It was a lot more than I was expecting. Most of the ships were far enough away that while they could hit us, it gave our point defence plenty of time to whittle down any incoming projectiles.

It took us about a minute to dismantle target Alpha enough for it to cease being a threat. This one didn't explode, and overall, it was quite rare for a ship to completely destroy itself in a large explosion.

Target Beta was next. The heat, which had been stable for a bit, now started to climb again as more railgun fire was hitting us. Fortunately, we didn't have to worry about that for quite a while yet, as we hadn't even had to use any active cooling methods.

This was quite grim work. I was quite sure none of the ships here could pierce our defences if we killed them fast enough.

It seemed that some of the enemy ships agreed, as a few of them stopped approaching. The ship designated Beta broke apart into three pieces under our fire and the small explosions that happened inside it.

This time, we didn’t move on to Gamma. Instead, we targeted Delta as it seemed to have stronger offensive capability. Even that ship had impressively strong shields. Without our current offensive weapon, it would have taken us way too long to take out one of their ships, if we even could have.

“Captain, should we use our missiles that my skill can produce?” FH asked. I could see why she would ask, as we were up against quite a lot of large ships.

“No, we keep that capability hidden for now.”

It took us about a minute or two to disable or destroy one ship. When we destroyed our seventh, the rest of the ships tried to escape.

“Pursue the largest cluster. Sensor AI’s, keep in mind that they might be trying to drag us towards a trap. Be vigilant.”

There was going to be no mercy on our side. The fewer of these ships that survived, the better the chances they wouldn't try again in the future. We were leaving behind quite a lot of loot, but I felt it would be too dangerous to start salvaging operations, as we didn't know what else was happening in this solar system.

The sensors weren’t only focused on our immediate area but the entire solar system as well. There were no planets here, only the sun that was giving off a lot of weird readings. There were at least 12 errors that had been detected, which went against the laws of physics.

One of them was making it so that we couldn’t connect to the quantum net, which would explain why no one was able to warn us about this anomaly. Gravity was weird here. Nothing was being pulled into the sun, but nothing seemed to be able to escape too far away as well.

Nothing was visible of the outside universe. There were no stars, which I was also guessing worked the other way around. Otherwise, this star would have been on the star charts.

The strangest phenomenon just showed itself as we were being hailed, not by the ships that were near us, they had given up, but instead, the signal was coming from the largest structure in this solar system.

They were about 6.8 million kilometres away. The station seemed to be quite a big one, although it was currently quite difficult to accurately measure its size. Most likely, it was the size of a couple of battleships, which made it incredibly large.

On my signal, we accepted the hail. A video image showed up. It was a humanoid with a lot of mechanical parts. Half of its face was a smooth chromed plate, but my eyes could pick up subtle fluctuations on the surface. That was no simple piece of metal.

“You have taken your retribution. I ask you to stop there. Otherwise, this will start another war, and we are already at the brink of not being able to survive here.” His tone was measured. The way he was currently holding himself showed confidence, but there was also wariness on his face, at least on the side that was still biological.

Once again, I have to thank FH for getting us so many good universal translator keys for so many different species. Without it, the way he was currently holding himself, if I were to base it on humans, he would have come off as withdrawn and unable to make eye contact, which for his species meant confidence instead.

“So be it,” I said back, signalling for us to stop our pursuit.

“You are reasonable. That is good. You will not be harassed anymore. The campers will stay away. You can approach my station, but any aggressive moves will be answered in kind,” he answered back immediately.

That should have been impossible, but that was one of those physics laws that seemed to be broken here. Distance didn’t seem to matter for communications like this. My eyes flicked towards the sun.

It was the culprit here. It had been changed by mana, similar to the star system, where the sun barely put out any radiation. This one was obviously a lot worse, and who knows what other surprises it might hold.

“You mentioned survival here. Is there no escape from this place?”

“None I know has managed it. We will speak more when you arrive.” And just like that, the video cut off.

“Are we going to the station?” Sam asked.

“It seems to be the only operational station in the star system,” Lola answered.

“We have time. Let’s gather as much data as possible.” With that, everyone got back to work, trying to figure out this strange place we had found ourselves in.