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

length. They shot spytec faina (mock shells). These mock shells were smaller than the nuclear fusion shells fired by EM cannons, but they ripped through space at the same speed. Again, they effected no harm whatsoever to the defending ship; it was all about what the receptors read.

“Ignite the main engines.”

“Main engines ignited.”

The Flicaubh was going through all the necessary steps for the combat to come.

“Space-time fusion in one minute.”

Now that the enemy had come this close, their quarry was clear — it was the Flicaubh.

“Communications Officer, turn eighty degrees to the left, then engage.”

While Atosryua had told them intercepting the enemy was unnecessary, now that it was obvious the enemy was targeting them, that no longer applied.

“Gunner, upon fusion, fire without delay. All hands, prepare for EM cannon fusillades.”

Mock EM cannon recoil was beyond paltry. The crew wouldn’t feel a thing, not even from a barrage of simultaneous fire. That was where the compucrystals came in. When they fired, the reverse thrusters and gravity control system were used to simulate the recoil of the real thing.

“E-minus ten seconds. Seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, fusion!”

The range of Sobash’s frocragh widened as soon as the Flicaubh rocked from the recoil. Needless to say, the enemy was firing at them, too. A head-to-head shoot-out.

At this rate, we’re not likely to get much out of this exercise, thought Sobash. “Gunner, I won’t give orders. Fire at will.”

“All ships ready for combat,” said the Senior Staff Officer, Hecto-Commander Semlaich.

“Very good,” said Atosryua, giving Semlaich a light nod before announcing to all ships under her command: “Attention. This is your Commandant speaking. The field of battle’s at our doorstep. It may not be playing host to a heated exchange of death lasers. It may be virtually flashlight-level beams and harmless pellets flying out of our cannons. But make no mistake — it is a battlefield. Those of you who are familiar with zones of war, remember that driving fire within. I’m sure it will be plenty heated enough for the young ones who haven’t seen actual battle yet to appreciate. Heads in the game, everyone.”

Atosryua pretended to be relaxed and comfy in her Commandant’s Seat. In her heart, however, she was seething with a level of rage one wouldn’t expect even toward the enemy on the real field of battle. Most Abhs conceptualized war as a stripe of natural disaster, and Atosryua was no exception. As such, she knew no hatred against the enemy.

No, the cause of her ire was Hecto-Commander Roiryua’s stratagem. It was a workable idea, there was no doubt about that. If it went according to plan, sacrificing a single ship could well halve the fighting capabilities of the target. Unfortunately for Roiryua, she’d managed to crawl out from under that fate, but unfortunately for her, that didn’t put the Red Team at any particular disadvantage.

What she wondered was whether he’d be willing to employ that tactic in the real world. In a scenario where both sides were of equal strength, and the total mass of the corps wasn’t just under the capacity limit of a single space-time bubble, the strategy wouldn’t hold. Plus, it was casting one ship as a nearly-suicidal decoy.

The Abh tended to view combat as a form of play. The thrill of a battle with lives on the line mirrored that of a game with points or prestige in the balance. But it wasn’t just one player’s life at stake. One could toss their own life on the wager board, but with subordinates’ lives to consider, contestants had to play prudently and with all seriousness. And mightn’t this be showing Roiryua to be lacking the proper discretion? Perhaps he couldn’t tell the difference between a gambling match over everything one was worth, and a game of chance played over a piece of candy with a child. Or perhaps he was simply taking this exercise as a light-hearted affair.

Ever the social butterfly, Atosryua had yet to feel the call of motherhood, but she did have an interest in the life-forms known as children. She’d even, at times, initiated the kids of friends into the fun of betting. She’d go a little easy on them, naturally. But if she felt that the kids, who were supposed to be avidly learning from the opportunity, were instead using it as a chance to take it easy, she was the type to have to resist the urge to spank them.

She didn’t feel as though she was teaching Roiryua the way of the game, but at the same time, she wasn’t here to get schooled by him. There was still a raft of unknowns when it came to operating raid ships and trample-blitz squadrons; this was the stage where they had to work hard to figure things out and rack up findings to spread to all the other starpilots. Even if post-meal dessert was all that was at stake, Atosryua intended to treat this seriously, and she expected the same from her opponent.

“Hyde Portal in thirty seconds,” said the Rilbigac Glagar (Flagship Navigator).

Yes, in thirty seconds’ time, all chance at a breather to go kick the punching bag would vanish.

“...Five, four, three, two, one, passing through!”

At once, her beyond-ship frocragh expanded. It just so happened Hyde’s sun was burning bright ahead of them.

Where’s the enemy? Atosryua focused her froch organ.

“Ship spotted. Azimuth: 54-121, distance: 0.12 light-seconds,” said the Drociac Glagar (Flagship Communications Officer). “Another ship at azimuth: 177-133; distance: 0.29 light-seconds. Another at azimuth: 298-57; distance: 0.09 light-seconds.”

Well, that’s not good. Atosryua bit her lip. She had, of course, considered the possibility Roiryua had scattered the ships under his command this way, but he’d distributed them more skillfully than she’d imagined.

She raised her command baton in the air. Then she closed her eyes to cut off her vision, perceiving only the space outside the ship through the input of her froch. The sensation was akin to floating amidst the stars. She knew the gunners of each of the ships under