Episode 50

Dingo had been in the game for decades, surviving more life-and-death scrapes than he could count. As the big boss of the White Dingo Outlaw Corp, he’d always parked himself right on the front lines. He took a certain amount of pride in the fact that, in any given crisis, he usually made the right call.

Key word: usually. Right now, he was losing his goddamn mind.

"What did they do to us? How the hell did they do that?!"

Dingo muttered the words under his breath, eyes glued to the sight of his companions' ships drifting apart in a slow-motion sequence of explosions. "Did anyone see an enemy Beam?!" he roared.

Silence was his only answer.

"Think, Dingo, think... what are the possibilities? How does a ship just... end up like that?"

His consort ships were currently busy decorating the vacuum with debris. Some of it would eventually be vaporized by a stray incinerator beam, while the rest would likely spend eternity wandering the void. Dingo kept up the bombardment, his eyes wide and frantic as he scrutinized the wreckage.

"...This doesn't make sense. Why is the debris flowing backward?"

Experience told him that a Beam-induced explosion should expand equally in all directions. A Beam vaporized a hull at ultra-high temperatures; the resulting thermal expansion was what caused the boom. Seeing wreckage get shoved backward, as if kicked by a giant invisible boot, was practically unheard of.

"A Large-caliber Cannon? No, that's impossible... wait. You bastards! It can’t be!"

Dingo frantically scrolled through the ship’s sensor logs, looking for anomalies. Then, he saw it. There it was: a "high-speed kinetic signature" flagged by the Motion Sensor.

"Warhead Weapons?! You’ve got to be kidding me! Who uses those shitty antiques—"

Beside him, another consort ship erupted in a violent plume of fire. The cigar-shaped vessel had a literal chunk—about a quarter of its hull—shaved clean off. It was still maneuvering, so it wasn't a total loss yet, but Dingo knew a combat-ineffective paperweight when he saw one.

"Gah! All ships, scatter! Get into the blind spots of their turrets!"

Realizing that flying in a straight line was a great way to get murdered, Dingo threw his ship into a wide detour. Seconds later, the sensors picked up another Motion Signature. He watched it like a hawk.

The incoming warhead, aimed at his previous position, drew a lazy curve through space. It was a clear miss. Dingo’s Automatic Debris Incineration Beam flicked on instantly, hitting the projectile with a Laser and vaporizing it. It was the natural, boring result everyone expected.

"See? That’s how it’s supposed to work. But that’s not what’s happening."

The sensors locked onto another warhead. This one was screaming toward one of his forward frigates. This time, the result was different. There was no flash of a Beam, no protective flicker of a shield. The projectile simply sidestepped the automated Lasers as if they weren't even there and silently punched a hole straight through the hull.

"...This is a bad joke. This guy is a monster!"

Faced with this unidentified "new" weapon, Dingo’s frantic guessing finally landed on a conclusion.

"The Imperial Military! It’s those goddamn Imperial dogs!"

He forgot he was in the middle of a literal dogfight and started kicking his desk in a fit of pure, unadulterated rage. Half of it was directed at the Empire; the other half was for himself.

"I’m not going down without a fight! I won’t let those suits at the Center jerk me around!"

As the distance between the fleets closed, the skirmish devolved into a spectacular, high-stakes exchange of Beams. Dingo had already lost five ships, but he still had the advantage in raw numbers.

He played it smart, rotating his damaged ships to the rear and lunging for the enemy's exposed engines whenever he saw a gap. The Beam Jamming units on some of his ships were doing okay, but they were useless against those kinetic slugs. A few of his captains had the bright idea to switch their shields to Physical mode, but that just made things worse—Taro’s fleet was still putting out more total damage with their Beam Weapons than the warheads.

Between the mounting casualties and the damage they were actually managing to land, it was a toss-up. For the first time in his career, Dingo honestly couldn't tell if he was winning or losing.

"This is costing way too much. Should we bail? Or—"

Dingo glanced at his secondary display. The persistent notification for a communication request was still blinking there, mocking him.

"...Dammit all!"

He punched the display with enough force to bruise and opened the line.

"I’m gonna say this once: you guys are the ones who started this," Taro snapped the moment the connection went live.

Taro was in a foul mood. He didn't know why this was happening, and frankly, he didn't think any explanation was going to make him feel better about this dumpster fire of a situation.

"『Listen to you bark. Do you Imperial dogs really think you can play petty thief in my backyard?』"

The voice coming through the speaker was dripping with venom. Taro started to fire back an insult but bit his tongue. He had bigger problems.

"Look, let's just call a ceasefire. We don't want to fight you, and there's no point to it anyway."

He was being 100% honest. He’d been jumped for no reason, and he was tired of it.

"『You might not want to fight, but I sure as hell do. First, you're going to give back what you stole.』"

Taro’s eyebrow twitched. His patience snapped.

"That's what I'm trying to talk to you about, you moron! Tell your ships to stop shooting right now, or I'm going to shove a Torpedo up your ass!"

A heavy, stunned silence descended upon the Control Room. Out of the corner of his eye, Taro thought he saw Koume clapping, but he chose to ignore it.

"『...Fine. Ceasefire in ten seconds.』"

[COUNTDOWN FUNCTION INITIATED: 10... 9... 8...]

Taro forwarded the system message to his consort ships. The moment the timer hit zero, the bombardment stopped. An eerie, heavy silence settled over the battlefield.

"『There. Happy? Now hand over the goods. Do that, and I might let you leave with your skins intact.』"

"Hmph. I don't trust you as far as I can throw your ship. And besides, why are you obsessed with this thing? It makes zero sense."

"『Stop playing games! Do you have any idea how much that thing is worth?』"

Taro looked down at the chip in his hand. Is this thing actually made of gold or something?

"You're doing all this for money? Fine, take a copy. Take a hundred copies for all I care. I'm sending the data now."

Taro dumped the entire contents of the chip over the comms line. It was just boring observation data used to track the history of the star systems—hardly a rare treasure. Since Taro was the only person in the galaxy actually looking for Earth, he saw no reason to keep the data to himself.

"『Hey... what is this crap?』"

The voice on the other end had gone dangerously low.

"What do you mean 'what is it'? It's the stuff I recovered," Taro snapped.

"『...I don't find jokes funny in a war zone, kid. Listen. I won't say a word to anyone about what you were doing out here. I'll stake the name of Dingo on it. Just give me the goods, and we're done.』"

Taro cocked his head. Something wasn't clicking. A sudden, horrible realization began to dawn on him. He scratched his head, his hands beginning to shake.

"Look... Mr. Dingo, or whatever your name is. These 'goods' you're talking about... are they a chip or a device inside a container?"

There was a long, excruciating silence.

"『...It’s a Capsule. Don't tell me—』"

"I don't have it, you absolute moron! Go back and find it yourself!"

Taro screamed in a fit of rage and hurled his Earphone-type Communication Device at the floor. He writhed in pure, unadulterated frustration before grinding the device into the deck with his heel.

"Dammit! This place is a hellhole! I had to kill people because of a simple misunderstanding?!"

Taro wiped away tears he hadn't realized were falling with the back of his hand and buried his face in his seat, screaming. He wanted to be alone. He wanted to curl up in a hole. But he couldn't leave. He was responsible for too many lives now.

"Communication Message from the enemy ship, Mr. Teiro," Koume said, her voice perfectly level. "They state they have dispatched a ship to verify your claim. We are to wait."

Taro didn't look at her. He just gave a dismissive wave of his hand. He was exhausted, and he didn't have a single ounce of energy left to give.