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

enemy picks a fight with you. If that happens, we won’t be able to swoop in to rescue, so please beat them.”

“Roger that,” said Sobash. He looked at the unoccupied Navigator’s Seat, before turning his gaze to Rearguard Yatesh, who was filling in for the role. The way Sobash had shifted his glance was smooth enough to obfuscate the fact that Ecryua’s absence had temporarily slipped his mind. “Split us off, if you would.”

And so the Flicaubh left its comrades’ side.

He understood both the enemy ship’s intentions, and the point of Atosryua’s orders. A seventh raid ship would exceed the mass limit of the bubble they were in, spurring the physical laws of planar space to rupture the space-time bubble without mercy. The raid ships did each have their own space-time bubble generator engines, so it wouldn’t spell their doom, but it would serve to throw off their formation if they transitioned through the portal individually like that. Which must be what the enemy was plotting.

There was a number of measures they ought to take. The first was to split off and intercept. For example, they could split into groups of three — that way, they could fight in an advantageous position even if the enemy ship were to merge with one of the bubbles. Yet three-ship bubbles were slower than single-ship bubbles. The enemy had stolen away the initiative as to whether or not to split space-times. Moreover, the enemy ship had only to predict whether they’d be in an inferior position if they fused with its potential target; there was nothing forcing it to do so. If the Red Team passed through the portal in the form of three-ship bubbles, they could just wage battle here in 3-space and have the advantage. And if the Blue Team set about recombining, then the Red Team would poise themselves to follow suit.

Ultimately, the Blue Team had two options: pass through in groups of three, or surrender. Splitting into single-ship bubbles was a recipe for defeat. They would gain speed, but whether they fled into the portal or had a scrape with Red Team ships was, again, in the enemy’s hands. The Red Team was running the show now.

There was one other option — forcing space-time fusion. With this method, no one knew what would happen after the bubble ruptured. How many lesser-mass bubbles would it divide into? How many raid ships would be in which bubbles? They could only guess in terms of probabilities. The enemy wouldn’t seize the initiative, but neither would the Blue Team. Control of the battlefield would fly off like a ball glancing off athletes’ grasping hands.

Taking into account various factors, having just one ship split off could just have been the best maneuver. If the enemy fused into five bubbles, they could easily pick off one such bubble’s worth of enemy firepower. If they fused into a single bubble, they could fight on equal terms.

Sobash had also surmised the reason his ship was chosen to break ranks — because the Flicaubh was down its conveyance ship, it was lighter than its fellows. This made it faster, which more than made up for the absence of the Navigator.

The Flicaubh split space-times from the Blue Team bubble.

“Ship Commander Sobash,” said Lafier, rising to her feet.

“I’m not giving you the captain’s seat, Fïac,” he joked.

“No, not that,” she pouted, taken aback. “I was going to suggest I stand in for Vanguard Ecryua.”

“Is that so? Well...” Sobash shook his head. “If this weren’t just a training exercise, I’d take all the hands I could get. But Your Highness isn’t a participant in this exercise. You’re an observer. If I let you pitch in, it wouldn’t be as fair.”

“I understand, but this training exercise is extremely realistic, and in a real battle, there’s a multitude of uncertainties at play. There is no ‘fair’ in war.”

That is one way to look at it, thought Sobash, very near to giving her the nod. But ultimately, he waved off the idea. “I’m afraid I won’t allow it. I’d like to see how we fare without a core crewmember.”

“I see. Then there’s no helping it,” she said, backing down.

Sobash was relieved. To tell the truth, he couldn’t imagine what having Lafier as a subordinate would be like, temporary or otherwise.

He positioned the space-time bubble surrounding his ship behind the one surrounding the rest of the Blue Team. Then he eyed the movements of the enemy on the planar space map. They were veering his way, but the Flicaubh was right next to the larger Blue bubble, so there was no telling which was their target. Either way, the Flicaubh would be drawn into combat maneuvers. After all, if the enemy fused with the Blue bubble, Sobash was duty-bound to fuse and join the fray.

“This is your Ship Commander speaking,” announced Sobash. “There’s a possibility the ship will enter a combat exercise. Unfortunately, it’ll be single-ship combat. I know you’ve likely had enough of this, but give it a hundred percent. Now then, all hands, ready for battle.”

He seated himself back down in the Ship Commander’s Seat and switched to out-of-ship frocragh mode. “Check the safeties on all of the firearms,” he ordered Deca-Commander Idlia.

“Checked the safeties, sir.”

“Excellent.” Sobash entered a passcode into the control console, informing the ship’s compucrystal network of the imminent combat exercise. This allowed him to pull the trigger of the laser cannons despite the safety being active. The cannons wouldn’t fire destructive death beams, but rather just concentrated light. When that light hit its mark, one or more of the receptors laid throughout the surface of the hull of the targeted ship would cry out and count it as a blow received.

“Space-time fusion in three minutes,” reported the Communications Officer.

“Release the safety on the irgymh faina (mock EM cannon),” he told Deca-Commander Idlia.

“Mock EM cannon ready to fire,” came the immediate reply.

Mock EM cannons were wonderful devices attached to the muzzles of real EM cannons, and about two dagh in