Chapter 237

"Damn it, we took a hell of a beating. How many of us are even left?"

In the dim, cramped cockpit of a small frigate, Alan grumbled at the console. He tried to wipe the stinging sweat from his eyes with a bandana, only to realize the fabric was already sopping wet. He let out a disgusted groan.

"Twenty-nine ships remain, Mr. Alan, Head of Intelligence. It’s grown a bit lonely out here, hasn't it?"

The somber voice of Natalia—leader of the Dandelion unit—crackled through the comms.

"Right," Alan grunted. He used his bare hand to swipe at the fresh stream of sweat trickling down his forehead. "Sorry for dragging you into this mess. I wish I’d come up with a better way."

He scratched his head, looking more than a little sheepish. He was trying to sound professional and serious, and he hoped she was buying it, but he couldn't help feeling a twinge of literal exposure. The heat in the cockpit had become so unbearable that he had stripped off every single stitch of clothing. Currently, the Head of Intelligence was conducting a top-secret military operation stark naked, save for a damp bandana and a pair of socks.

"Think nothing of it. If the Former Sunflower Squad is ever to see the light of day again, we must be prepared to go this far. If anything, I am grateful you gave us the opportunity."

Natalia’s response was characteristically feminine yet sharp.

Once famous as the Enzio Alliance’s premier Electronic Warfare Craft Unit, the Sunflower Squad had been the elite of the elite. They hadn’t just tormented Rising Sun during the Enzio Campaign; they had spent years systematically dismantling anyone who dared challenge them in the digital theater.

But then the Alliance collapsed, their reputation tanked, and the revelation that their electronic warfare craft had served as the vanguard for Mercenary puppet infiltration made them the pariahs of the post-war galaxy. Rising Sun had snatched them up—their talent was too good to waste—and put them to work on various missions to scrub the "traitor" stain from their names. Still, public perception didn't change overnight. Rebranding the unit as Dandelion had been a desperate attempt at a fresh start.

"Save the thanks for Teiro," Alan said. "I just made a cold, rational judgment that you were the right tools for the job. The boss is the softie. He’s genuinely worried that if things keep going like this, you won’t have a place left in the universe to call home."

"Is that so? Well, even so. To be evaluated fairly without prejudice is a gift in itself."

"Hmph. If you say so. I'll take it."

Alan waved a dismissive hand and glanced down at the Electronic Sheet stuck to his forearm. The transparent display showed the time—the most critical variable—right next to a blinking red notification: [WARNING: ABNORMAL BODY TEMPERATURE].

"Yeah, I know. I’m cooking. Thanks for the update," he muttered.

Alan leaned forward, squinting through the reinforced glass of the cockpit. Beyond the pane, the void was alive with the crisscrossing lances of beam fire and the stroboscopic flicker of distant explosions. The battle was finally reaching its screaming climax.

"So... which side is actually winning?"

He leaned even further forward, trying to get a better look. Because of the mission's strict silence requirements, they couldn't run a Wide-area Scan or use long-range comms. He was flying blind in the middle of a supernova-sized clusterfuck.

"Hard to say, but it looks like a total brawl," Natalia reported. "Through the optical zoom, I can see fine beams darting everywhere."

"Fine beams... Right, Carriers. This is gonna get ugly if we don't move."

They were supposed to arrive alongside the third wave of kinetic munitions. Now that the fourth wave was practically on top of them, they were running dangerously behind schedule.

"The delay from earlier is finally catching up to us..." Natalia’s voice trailed off.

"Drop it. I don't want to hear it. Listen to me: I didn't promise you guys a nice plaque and a posthumous medal. You’re going to stay alive and let people cheer for you in person. Got it?"

"But—"

"I said drop it! Sure, being late might mean a few more casualties for the Main Fleet, but they’re in a Fleet Combat. Over there, getting knocked out of the fight doesn't automatically mean you're dead. Not like it does for us."

Alan cut her off before she could argue further, adding a sharp, "And another thing."

"If we’d left those people to die back there, this whole operation might have collapsed anyway. I made the call to save them because I decided it was necessary for the mission. It wasn't sympathy. It was logic. Clear?"

Alan ended the transmission before she could reply and let out a long, ragged sigh in the sweltering sauna of his cockpit.

A dozen hours ago, the Dandelion Squad had hit a string of minor errors and freak accidents on their way to the Delta point. They’d been forced into a horrific trolley problem: prioritize the mission clock or save a group of stranded lives. Every second lost meant another life potentially snuffed out in the Main Fleet. In the end, Alan had overruled Natalia’s cold logic and chosen to save the people right in front of them.

"Nobody ever knows which choice is the right one until they're already buried," Alan whispered to the empty air.

He picked up a needle—he’d lost count of how many he’d used today—and jammed another IV drip into his arm. The cockpit was pushing fifty degrees Celsius. He was basically a human prune; without the constant hydration, he’d have stroked out hours ago. To keep their signature low, almost all cooling systems were offline. The life support was doing just enough to keep his blood from boiling, and not a degree more.

"Man... considering the heat, Natalia’s probably sitting there in her birthday suit, too. Or her underwear at best. Maybe I should try a video call next time. If she’s heat-stroked enough, she might forget to turn the privacy filter on."

Alan chuckled at his own terrible joke, trying to whistle past the graveyard. But his brief moment of irreverence was shattered by a burst of static.

"[...STATIC... TEAM MOAT CRAFT... CAPTURED... BREAKING AWAY... MY APOLOGIES... PRAYING FOR THE EXECUTION...]"

The distorted voice of a man echoed through the speaker. Alan bolted upright in his seat, twisting around to look through the rear view. He saw a single ship peeling away from the formation, trailing smoke as it vanished into the dark.

"I swear to god," Alan growled, slamming his fist against the glass. "If anyone dares complain about us being late after this, I will personally tear them limb to limb."

He snapped a sharp salute to the dying light of the ship, holding it until the last spark faded from view.

The destination was close now. Close enough to touch.

But for the men and women of Dandelion, it felt like it was an eternity away.

"Isn't it about time you gave up, Young President? If this damage keeps piling up, things are going to get... messy, wouldn't you say?"

Etta’s hateful face sneered from Taro's visor.

"Maybe," Taro replied, leaning back in his command chair with forced nonchalance. Marl had left the ship a while ago; it was just him and Koume alone on the bridge now.

The battle had ground into a total stalemate.

Taro and his crew had survived the initial swarm of Carrier-borne craft, and Bella’s tactical genius had neutralized the subsequent fleet-wide offensive. Bella’s command style was "The Royal Road"—a textbook-perfect, rock-solid approach that was so fundamentally sound it didn't matter if the enemy could read her mind. She had turned a chaotic, high-stakes brawl into a boring, predictable slugging match. And that was exactly what they needed to survive.

"But hey, it works both ways, doesn't it?" Taro countered. "Imagine being a massive power and getting embarrassed by a 'tiny regional company.' You even brought a Carrier, and this is the best you can do? It’s a bit pathetic, Etta."

I’m bluffing through my teeth, and I think she knows it.

Rising Sun didn't have the strength left to counterattack. To make matters worse, the enemy Carrier hadn't launched its second or third waves yet. If Taro tried to push forward, those ships would just jump him from behind and wipe the fleet out in a pincer. Instead, the enemy was busy swatting down Taro’s warhead groups. Those warheads weren't equipped with Anti-Drive Particles; they were sitting ducks.

"Fufu... true enough. But a win is a win. I don't care about the process anymore. I finally understand what my sister was talking about."

The battle of attrition dragged on. In terms of pure ship-to-ship maneuvering, Bella had the edge, but the sheer weight of enemy numbers kept the scales balanced. Both fleets were bleeding out. By now, nearly half of the ships that had started the fight were either scrap metal or drifting husks.

"Yeah, I hear you. But I’m running a democracy over here—mostly. I can't exactly agree with the 'winning is everything' vibe. Plus, I just plain don't like you."

But the balance was about to break. On Plum’s Radar Screen, massive [SPACE RESERVATION] signatures were blooming around the enemy fleet. Reinforcements. Within minutes, an entire legion—likely with its own Carrier—would drop out of warp. And that wasn't even counting Admiral Sod’s fleet lurking somewhere out there.

"Oh, how inconvenient for you! I thought you space-dwellers lived in a world where anything goes. It seems the roles have been reversed! Aha... Ahahaha!"

Etta’s shrill laughter grated on Taro’s nerves. He winced at the noise and gave a theatrical shrug.

"Really, you’ve all done quite well. For an enemy, you were magnificent. I never dreamed it would come to this. You’ve defied every Formula I have. But, alas. You simply ran into the wrong opponent."

Etta smirked, looking like a cat that had finally caught the mouse. Taro felt his blood boil, but he kept his face a mask of bored resignation.

"Well... you’re not wrong. Can’t argue with math. I guess sheer mass wins in the end... wait, haha... you’ve got to be kidding me. There's more?"

Another set of Space Reservations locked in. Taro’s smile turned into a jagged, twitchy grimace. Ships were already beginning to flicker into existence from the first set of reservations. There were so many he didn't even want to count them.

"Those are the units that couldn't reach me because you decided to pelt me with space debris," Etta said, her voice dripping with sadistic glee. "Fufu... it looks like all that effort was for nothing."

She looked delighted—manic, even. To Taro, she looked like she was losing her mind. Her skin was a sickly hue, and her eyes were a roadmap of burst capillaries.

"Now, for the ultimatum: Guide me to The Facility. I know you’ve moved it nearby. I could just annihilate you and search the wreckage, but that sounds tedious. You’ve clearly left plenty of decoys."

Etta leaned in, her eyes wide. Taro looked down, brooding in silence for a long moment, before finally looking up with the face of a man who had lost everything.

"If you get what you want, will you actually leave?" Taro asked, his voice weak.

Etta gave him a thin, razor-sharp smile.

"You have my word. Oh, I’ll still be claiming the rights to the Zayed region and a hefty sum of reparations—something you can pay off in, say, a few years of back-breaking labor. Fleet repairs aren't cheap, after all. And I’d appreciate it if you stopped sticking your nose into EAP business. We have a market to maintain."

"..............."

"Fufu, don't look so glum. I don't actually want you gone. The regional balance is precisely tuned: Rising Sun and the White Dingoes team up to keep the EAP in check. If you disappear, the EAP might just crush the Dingoes and unify the whole sector. If that happens, the market value drops to zero. Boring, right?"

"Fine... understood," Taro muttered. "But I can't take all several hundred of your ships. There aren't enough particles over there to support a fleet that size."

"A joke, surely. I’ll go with just one ship. But don't try anything clever. If I so much as sneeze, the rest of my fleet has orders to glass you. And for safety’s sake, we’ll sign a formal ceasefire. One of the conditions is the immediate cessation of your investigation into The Facility."

"Yeah... I got it."

Taro’s answer was blunt. Etta nodded, looking utterly satisfied.

Rising Sun had agreed to the ceasefire.

[WILL THE MATCH BE DECIDED LIKE THIS?]