“Captain, detecting enemy warp distortion!”
A short-range warp. They’d likely emerge at the last possible distance to avoid collision.
A warp right into the heart of the enemy fleet—like in the simulation with Delan and Ares—was unthinkable for a manned vessel. Failure wouldn’t just mean a head-on crash; overlapping spatial coordinates would annihilate both ships.
That tactic only worked in simulations, with no lives at stake.
And the enemy destroyer last time was unmanned—that’s why it could pull off such reckless maneuvers and rapid short-range warps.
But what if the enemy was suicidal? The dark thought flickered through Lillian’s mind.
Yet they wouldn’t—couldn’t—destroy this ship.
The existence of a spy had solidified into near-certainty in Lillian’s mind. Could they really sink their own allies so callously?
Their oddly restrained attacks weren’t complacency or underestimation—they had no choice.
And that was the ship’s opening.
“Here they come… Shields to maximum! Cease retreat. Engine room, prepare main thrusters for ignition. Standby for my signal!”
Weltall diverted Tiberius’s energy from offense to defense.
Simultaneously, CIC reported that main gun control had been returned to Cowen.
The enemy fleet shimmered like a mirage—then vanished. An instant later, they reappeared 300,000 units ahead of Tiberius.
A blinding flash and devastating shockwave struck again.
Yet the battleship’s shields held firm. For now.
“Shield output down to 43%! Surface armor damage detected! Port observation deck block destroyed!”
Lillian reported the shield’s endurance. Total failure was inevitable.
The ship itself wasn’t critically damaged—yet. But a cruiser’s shot had partially breached the shields, residual energy carving into Tiberius’s port armor. The loss of the retracted weather deck section was a shock to the crew. Thankfully, no students were there, but it was a grim reminder of mortality.
Noticing the damage, the enemy accelerated, closing in.
[Now’s the time! Bite that cruiser’s ass!]
As if waiting for the cue, Delan’s voice crackled through comms.
In an instant, fighter squadrons—split into two groups—high-boosted in from behind the enemy fleet. In three seconds, they arrived, unleashing every torpedo before breaking away.
The enemy fleet must have noticed the high-boosting fighters—but their reaction was a split-second too late.
The squadrons had lain in wait, systems at minimal activity. Had the enemy deployed recon drones, things might’ve been different.
They likely never imagined the ship had already deployed fighters.
A single ship mimicking carrier tactics and fleet maneuvers had clearly rattled them.
“Torpedoes hit—now!”
Dozens of torpedoes struck the enemy’s stern. Some were intercepted, but the point-blank explosions strained their shields—followed by direct hits.
Too late to change course. They’d missed their chance to scatter.
The cruiser bore the brunt. Positioned at the rear as the flagship, it took the most damage.
The sudden overload vaporized its shields in seconds.
“Cowen!”
Lillian’s shout went unanswered. He’d already fired.
Not sporadic, random shots meant to restrict the opponent’s course or keep them at bay, but a straight course aimed for a direct hit.
The dull glow of heavy particles carves into the cruiser’s armor with overwhelming heat energy.
A single destroyer moved forward as if to become a shield, but it was merely a suicidal act. The cruiser had already reached its critical point, with explosions erupting from various sections. Tiberius’s main guns scored a direct hit on the destroyer caught in this chaos. Though it tried to withstand with its slightly remaining shields, combined with the strain from the exploding cruiser behind it, the two ships vanished unceremoniously.
The enemy is in confusion. The remaining destroyer had no choice but to make indecisive advances, neither fully retreating nor attacking.
But by now it was merely a target.
“Fire!”
A full barrage from the main guns.
The destroyer somehow managed evasive maneuvers, but took a direct hit to its stern, moving away while performing irregular maneuvers like a leaf tossed in the wind.
A few seconds later, the hull showed a slight bulge like a balloon about to burst, and then its signal disappeared.
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A single ship’s victory over a fleet of three.
For these students, the result was more than just a win.
They were alive. Against impossible odds, without a single loss. That luck, that fact, sank in.
When the end of battle was declared, the interior of Tiberius was filled with thunderous cheers. In that moment alone, whether they had been at odds with each other or had never even met, people embraced whoever was nearby, shook hands, exchanged smiles, and shouted until their voices grew hoarse.
Though they had been boiling with excitement over the dramatic victory, now many students were sleeping like logs. As if a taut string had suddenly snapped, the ship fell silent. Perhaps to signal that night had come, the lights had dimmed. Although you could still hear the voices of the few students who remained awake and the sounds of the maintenance crew repairing the blown-out port observation deck, a different kind of atmosphere flowed through the ship—one that felt almost peaceful.
Weltall permitted this as well. Without such a respite, their mental fortitude wouldn’t hold, and now was the time to share in the joy of survival.
Even so, vigilance could not be neglected. Naturally, they needed to continue operations at each station in shifts.
Nevertheless, the ship remained quiet.
The first bridge, which had been so noisy during combat, now had its lighting lowered. Still, the system itself remained functional, with panels glowing faintly like illuminations.
Lillian was there, on alert standby duty.
“Somehow… this feels nostalgic.”
In this darkness, she simply gazed vacantly into space. This had been her daily routine after the decisive battle in her previous life. Day after day, endlessly circling through meaningless regions of space, counting unchanging starlight until the day ended.
For over sixty years, Lillian lived that way—occasionally killing time by playing fleet battles in simulations, and when she got bored, she’d go back to counting stars.
Like that, she wasted time on meaningless things, only to finally vanish in the light of heavy particles as a sacrificial pawn.
And then, before she knew it, she was back in the past, living her life all over again.
“History has changed in small ways. Right now, my memories still give me a major advantage, but…”
Though the Tiberius was exhilarated by this battle’s victory, complete safety was far from guaranteed. Amidst it all, Lillian was the only one who knew a portion of what was to come. Some details had shifted, but the broad strokes remained the same.
After this battle, the next enemy attack wouldn’t come for quite some time.
Frankly, this battle had been the biggest hurdle. Managing to break through while minimizing damage could even be called a stroke of luck.
Because in her past life, the Tiberius had suffered damage to its secondary guns, and its armor had been riddled with cracks.
They hadn’t even deployed fighters, instead charging into enemy lines like an old-fashioned fleet battle, exposing their flanks as they exchanged broadsides. There had been no other choice—it was a tactic meant to catch the enemy off guard—but it had been dangerously reckless.
And the one who had forced them into that position was none other than herself.
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