Dinner With Family by Hiroyuki Morioka (best novels for teenagers TXT) 📕

crew aboard the raid ships knew that, too. Jint didn’t quite buy that logic.

“By the way,” said Jint, “can we communicate with the landworld?”

“No, of course not.”

“No?”

Ecryua nodded. “We can only place a call during an emergency.”

It appeared they could only send a message after the exercise was lifted. In point of fact, it was probably loopy to expect to communicate with the landworld using a conveyance ship. In any case, it wasn’t exactly an atmosphere conducive to calmly resolving the challenge facing them.

The image of a zoomed-in Martinh was still visible on the wall in front. Jint leaned forward. “Could you enlarge the picture a little more?” he asked, pointing at a place on the screen. “Just make that bit bigger.”

Something was rising up from the blanket of green. It was very low-orbit, and looked as though it might stop at the tropopause. “Could you enlarge it more?”

Ecryua did so without complaint, perhaps because of the urgency in Jint’s voice. Due to the thin-but-extant atmosphere, the object was distorted as though viewed through a shimmering haze. Still, it was clearly a raid ship. What was it doing near a landworld?

“Message that ship!” shouted Jint.

“I already told you why I can’t.”

“This is an emergency!”

“Why?”

“Because it might be striking the surface!”

“No, it’s not.”

“Based on what!?”

“It’s leaving.”

It was as she said. The raid ship was about to break away from planetary orbit. Had it already launched anti-surface strikes?

“Let’s get closer to the landw—...” But he thought better of it. He yearned to see what had become of the surface, but so long as he was in the dark regarding whether the Forr Da Antohbeeta were fully operational, it was just too dangerous. For a small vessel like a conveyance ship, it would be one-hit-and-lights-out.

“Second thoughts?”

“Yeah. It’s too risky,” said Jint, though his anxiety hadn’t gone anywhere. “When’s the exercise gonna end, if I may ask?”

“Dunno. Hungry?”

“Who, me? Oh, are you in for a meal break? Sounds good, actually,” he replied. He wasn’t that hungry, but some food would help turn his mood.

“Kay.” Ecryua got up, and it wasn’t long before she was back with combat rations.

Jint thanked her, took his portion, and stuffed his cheeks. After all, “eat” was about the extent of what he could do at the moment.

“The only one that’s yet to return is the Flicaubh’s conveyance ship,” said Atosryua. “We sustained less ‘damage’ than I was psyching myself up for. Of course, in an actual battle, we want that percent to be zero.”

Why did the damage, however small, have to be in the form of my subordinates? Did I pick the wrong people? Sobash felt slightly attacked, but naturally, he was overthinking it. Atosryua was not the type to mince words.

At any rate, the Flicaubh was now forced to fight without its navigator. That being said, the navigator didn’t usually have much to do while in 3-space. Assisting a busy Deca-Commander Idlia and the Communications Officer was the name of the game. And he had ordered her to serve as the conveyance ship’s Skipper.

The Blue Team of Trample-Blitz Squadron 1 had fused space-times right before passing through the portal, and conducted the necessary information link. So far, they’d released several waves of conveyance ships to scout out the other side of the Hyde Portal. According to the first recon trek, the six “enemy” ships were spread out, but no sooner did they receive the report than the ships began to gather, already assuming the formation to intercept them.

“It seems the enemy’s decided to intercept us in 3-space.”

“Then should we plunge in without splitting space-times?” said Vice Hecto-Commander Direrh, Ship Commander of the Batcaubh.

“No, let’s split for the time being,” said Atosryua, shaking her head. “Hecto-Commander Roiryua isn’t about to wait.”

In 3-space, a portal looked like a big phosphorescent orb. In planar space, it existed as a curve in the cosmic fabric. There was no connection between any given point on the sphere and a specific point on the curve. Practically speaking, that meant that one could have no inkling which specific point on the planar space side they’d emerge through when entering a portal from 3-space, and vice versa. Even if they entered the portal in an orderly line, the formation would inevitably be broken up on the other side. This wasn’t much of an issue in times of peace, but it was a huge liability in a space battle — it could make for easy pickings for the enemy.

However, this did not apply to groups of ships within single space-time bubbles. It was the bubbles that got scattered, not the ships inside them. A corps that shared a bubble could maintain formation while passing through a portal. However, space-time bubbles had mass limits. It was impossible to encompass a large fleet in a single bubble... but six raid ships could be managed. The problem was that bubbles that were that close to capacity were sluggish things. In order to speed things up, they would need to split space-times and advance toward the vicinity of the portal before re-merging.

“The reassembly point is here,” said Atosryua, a blue blip lighting up on the window-screen showing the map of planar space. It was a point right by the Hyde Portal. “After that, we just fight. No specific strategy — we fuse space-times, we run the info link right after, and I’ll give you your alignments then. That is all. I’ll see you at the rendezvous. All ships, split space-times.”

The six raid ships fused once again.

“Information link completed,” reported the Communications Officer.

That moment, something came flying from out of the portal. It could only be an enemy raid ship.

“Judging by its mass, it’s a single-ship bubble.”

“What are they playing at!?” Atosryua placed a hand on her forehead. “Oh, I get it. Wonder if they’re planning to use the same tactic in actual war? Oh well, for now we need to deal with what’s in front of us. Flicaubh, split away.”

“Do we intercept?”

“No need. Unless, that is, the