Abyssal sent out a small decoy construction drone, fitted with radar, outside of asteroid Y2. She wanted to make sure that the coast was clear before she departed the asteroid. The drone spun and orbited around the asteroid before passing back footage of what's happening outside of the asteroid into Abyssal's consciousness.
The radar didn't pick up anything in the immediate radius of the area. Within the 360° view of the surroundings, she could see that everything was fine and there were no enemies either. There was one thing that the drone could see though— it could see the raging battle being held some few million kilometres away from her position. Small white twinkle of explosions and lasers could be seen in the distance. The battle between the crimson red fighter and the sakura-themed battlecruiser.
'Uwahh… The two are still going at it, huh. I wonder who is winning right now? Astral? Jinko?' Thought Abyssal as she started up her ship.
'Ah well, it doesn't matter who wins or loses anyway. I just need to focus on getting out of here,' Abyssal thought before preparing a ship-wide broadcast.
"I'm taking off now, you guys seated up and ready?" Abyssal asked the two people behind her.
"Ready, nyaa,"
"I have finished preparations, master. All resources and drones are in the ship. You may leave at any moment."
"Alright then. I have control!" Shouted Abyssal as she lifted off and started to exit the Asteroid. She then used her directional thrusters to slowly and steadily get to the asteroid entrance.
Abyssal expected there would be some difficulties to steer the bigger ship out of the small entrance of the asteroid hideout, but to her surprise, the shark-shaped ship manoeuvred and turned around swiftly. The difference in manoeuvrability when compared to the Maxwell was like comparing a truck to a car. It was no competition at all, the shark class can definitely turn faster.
'Woah… this thing turns around like butter… not as good as the turn rate on the Fierca though, but quite good nonetheless,' Abyssal gave her thoughts as she steered the ship. It was an 8/10 for her.
With a better turn rate, she navigated the insides of the asteroid before leaving it without too much trouble. She looked back at the small hideout that she built and has been staying for the past two weeks and said goodbye to it. Maybe in the future, she would construct something familiar. Making a hideout inside an asteroid was a pretty cool and fun idea. Perhaps in the future, she could further improve on her hideout, like adding a radar to orbit the hideout and maybe extra shielding or even a small outpost with its own life support systems. Possibilities are endless.
'Goodbye for now.'
Once outside, she warmed up the warp drive and started to calculate her next destination. This was something that she needed to do outside of the Asteroid, outside of safety, lest it would take forever to calculate. There was something to do about having to calculate the space around herself and her destination to avoid disaster, or at least, that was what Meica told Abyssal about how warping works.
In this particular case, Abyssal made two calculations; one towards the coordinates that Astral gave to her and one more towards a far-away coordinate but right beside the Freedom United borders— far far away from any port and mining zones, just an empty piece of space with little to no traffic.
Astral's coordinates were nearer and were much easier for Abby to calculate for some reason, taking only a few minutes to calculate. It was as if something was there, luring people into the coordinates. However, Abyssal didn't want to go to some unknown coordinates, given to her by someone she barely knew. It was only for an emergency if she had to absolutely warp out at any moment.
For now, all she needed to do was wait out the calculation for the second coordinate and she should be out of danger. An empty random piece of space was as safe as it gets. Abyssal could not think of any place safer to warp to.
Once warped, she would engage her thrusters to the max and flee the space in a random direction just in case there was some sort of technology that would allow someone to track down a ship based on where they warped. Chances are, Jinko probably located Abyssal that way.
As Abyssal waited for Abby to finish her calculations, she steered her ship away from the battlefield in hopes that she could at least get away from them further. For all Abyssal knew, both Jinko and Astral might have the capability to do short-range jumps. She would not be truly safe until she warped away.
[Time to finish calculations: 26 Minutes.] Abby sent out a notification.
'Tsk, this is gonna take a while…' thought Abyssal as she meticulously checked her cameras for any signs of an enemy.
"Is that bright light… a ship?" Kuon asked. She was staring at the display in the bridge which showed the general direction of the battle between Astral and Jinko.
"Yeah. She did this some sort of limiter release thingy and suddenly her thrusters flared up like it was a mini sun or something. I don't know what she did, but she accelerated to insane speeds. If Astral wasn't there, Jinko would have probably caught up to me," Abyssal answered as she continued checking the cameras.
"Interesting. For a country whose doctrine is all about stealth. Using something like that is… a little bit of a desperate move, I must say," Kuon remarked.
"Even though it's strong, nyaa? Battleship went super fast with big guns "
"Using that in the middle of the battle is basically saying, shoot me. If someone were to use that in a brawl, it would be alright. But if it was used in an environment where radar and communications were of no use, then it would be no different than suicide. Also, bright lights like that are bound to attract some attention," Kuon replied.
"Doesn't matter what it is honestly, I don't see anybody taking on that thing in this zone," Abyssal said.
��I see. But still, you said that crimson red fighter is actually fighting this battlecruiser head-on?"
"And like a bunch of fighters too at the same time, yeah. One beam was enough to tear a ship apart in two."
"That's… pretty amazing. I wonder what kind of tech is in that ship."
"Beats me. We aren't sticking around to find out, that's for sure."
The place went silent for a while as everyone sat calmly for the warping calculations to finish. Both Kuon and Meica stared at the display while Abyssal occasionally checked her radar and her surroundings for any enemies. Her radar upgrade didn't exactly pay off against Jinko and Astral's stealth capabilities as far as she was aware, but it was the only thing she got against sneaky foes. She could not possibly scan every pixel of her camera feed, after all.
However, Abyssal would soon find out that her radar upgrades were not as useful as she thought it would be. It was as Astral said, this place was not a kind one to weak strangers like her.
*BOOM!
As if waiting for her, a large explosion hit Abyssal on the side of her ship. It wasn't like any other explosion she has ever felt before. The feeling was like having someone swing a bat onto her ribs before going into shock, her entire body paralysed as if stung by a deadly scorpion's venom. It was so sudden that she didn't even manage to register what happened. So sudden that she didn't even have the time to scream out in pain.
….
…
..
.
Abyssal almost blanked out from the attack. Nay, she did, but only for a short while. As she came back into the world of the living, she could see a bunch of small calibre shells coming towards her. The accuracy of the shots was bad, so they all missed Abyssal and flew right past her. Tracing back to the origins of the shells, she could see a destroyer size ship just right outside her absolute detection range of 50 000 kilometres. It had a small silhouette but was visible enough to be detected through her camera system.
It was a ship with a soot-black motif and was shaped like a bunch of boxes glued together— the pattern of its camouflage allowed it to blend with the space around her. On the ship were glowing red lines and a skull painted with white. The destroyer was positioned full broadside towards Abyssal and on top of the destroyer were three small gun mounts aimed at her. If Abyssal had to guess, the ship itself was at least three times larger than Abyssal herself, reaching 600 meters in length.
'Was the ship there before this? I scanned the whole place…' thought a confused Abyssal. It was as if the ship had been there the entire time but Abyssal only noticed it just then.
Soon after, a large amount of information hit Abyssal — with Abby just relaying tons and tons of information towards the emotional circuit of the S.A.S. Abyssal.
[-Shell hit to the starboard directional propulsion system.
-Shell released a small disrupting field, damaging electronics. Unable to perform emergency repairs
-Manoeuvrability reduced by 15%.
-Power reroute failed. Leaking power towards starboard thrusters. Overall power available reduced by 34%.
-Missile pod damaged. Unable to launch missiles.
-Calculation to warp coordinates B delayed due to lack of power and CPU, estimated time to completion 2 hours.
-Both transmitters damaged, unable to send outbound messages
-Warp drive hit. Minimal damage sustained. Beginning repairing process. Estimated time to completion of repairs: 7 minutes.
-Unknown enemy detected, Distance: 78 0000 Kilometres away.]
'She's going to shoot again,' thought Abyssal as she ignored the barrage of error messages coming towards her stream of consciousness. She quickly took control of the ship and steered away from the destroyer's line of sight.
As expected, the destroyer shot her three small calibre gun mounts towards Abyssal, throwing out nine black mass-based projectiles at her. The dispersion and accuracy of the shells were quite bad so it was easy for Abyssal to dodge them— rather would it be that the destroyer simply missed its shots?
"What was that, Nyaa?!"
"Master, is everything alright?"
The two panicked voices of Abyssal's crew yelled out, but Abyssal was in no mood nor shape to respond to them. She only continued to steer away from the destroyer while occasionally making random turns left and right to throw off the ship's aiming. As the second round of shells missed Abyssal in its entirety, the destroyer started moving nearer to Abyssal, perhaps in an attempt to land a more accurate shot.
Abyssal's first reaction was to move away from the ship, keeping her distance away and probably even going out of the range of her guns. However, she soon found out that the destroyer was much faster than Abyssal. It moved hull front towards Abyssal with a speed at least twice of Abyssal. Luckily due to her facing towards Abyssal as she moved, only one mount was facing Abyssal. A good twenty seconds passed when it shot a third salvo towards Abyssal, which promptly missed.
'It takes at least twenty seconds for her to reload that gun,' thought Abyssal as she observed the ship further. She was looking at the ship for some sort of missile mount or some other weapon that it could use to fire at her. There was none that she could see, but she made sure to keep her chaffs ready to fire in case the destroyer had something up its sleeves.
Twenty-five seconds passed and the destroyer was ready to fire again. It turned its body sideways and faced its full broad towards Abyssal before taking a few seconds to aim. The three gun mounts then fire towards Abyssal in a tight spread. Abyssal who was ready for the attack, immediately strafed right, avoiding the shells.
This was the perfect moment for Abyssal to strike back, but alas, her missile system was damaged by the previous hit and her big weapon was not functional due to the Shark Class being incomplete. She could try her regular laser turrets, but then she would not have enough energy to power the directional propulsion system— she was down in power, after all. Having no other choice, Abyssal could only weave left and right in order to avoid the destroyer's attacks, hoping that she could buy enough time for her warp drives to come online again.
Her luck came in the form of an unknown attack towards the destroyer— shells after shells of blue light came towards the black destroyer. Some of it even hit the said ship but bounced off its shields— a black bubble type that surrounded the ship. Following the shells, Abyssal could see three cruisers sized ships, in the far distance, aiming towards the destroyer. There were three ships with white, grey and blue colours, all of them had a Lion's emblem on them.
The ships themselves looked to be of a similar class, except that one of them had a slightly larger silhouette and had more golden motifs on it. Perhaps the capital ship of the group.
'Oh nooo… More ships?' Abyssal lamented to herself.
They were in a line formation and were constantly shelling at the destroyer. Though their attacks did hit the destroyer, none of it managed to pierce through its shields. For a while, Abyssal let out a sigh of relief, thinking that the ships will now engage with one another, giving her the time to escape. Unfortunately for Abyssal, that would not happen. Perhaps, they finally noticed Abyssal as one of them quickly turned its guns to fire at Abyssal too.
'Oh. My. God!' Abyssal screamed out internally as she slammed her face onto an imaginary desk. '...I can't ever take a break can't I?'