The Germanic Star-Empire was entirely unaware of how close they were to being forced by their Suzerains to allow the banking clans of the Ghimderi Trade Union into their territory. If this were to have happened, it would have shattered the bonds between the Alfheim Dominion and their favorite hounds. It would have only be a matter of time before the Germanic nation rose up in arms against their masters.
Nor were they aware of the risk that the Alfheim Dominion's crown princess had taken to ensure their sovereignty over internal matters. But just because the Germans did not know of these things, it did not mean that the Alfheim Empress was so ignorant.
In fact, just after the conference call ended between Celestia, Bixle, and Chronarius, the young Admiral contacted her esteemed mother to report on the situation at hand. When Lunaria heard that her daughter had been threatened by one of those slimly little scoundrels, she had every intention of sending her fleets to decimate the Ghimderi home world.
However, in the end, she decided to up the increase the security around her youngest daughter, and send a stern warning to all the Ghimderi Trade Princes that if Celestia were to wind up dead, or missing, she would hold their people responsible and wipe them from the face of the galaxy.
As for Erich, even if he was aware of the dispute between the Asterion Dynasty and the Goldentooth Cartel, which had emerged as a result of the border wars, he could not have cared any less. Instead, he was busy flying over yet another Dvrakian World, fighting what was left of the enemy's starfighter corps.
While the capital ships of the Dvrakian Navy had been decimated over the skies of Therakles, the Consortium still maintained the ability to manufacture warships. But, rather than waste their precious resources on larger ships like destroyers and battleships, they adopted a policy of mass producing fighters and bombers to protect what few worlds they still held on to.
At first, these new waves of small spacecraft were piloted by Dvrakians, but as the numbers of their available pilots rapidly dwindled, the Dvrakian Consortium was forced to operate what remained of their fleet with robotic pilots powered by primitive artificial intelligences.
These robots were not as capable as actual trained pilots, and thus they were even more easily shot out of the sky, but they were easy to manufacture, and could be mass produced in quantities that far outpaced the Consortium's ability to train new pilots.
Thus, while robots fought in the orbit of the remaining Dvrakian Worlds, the rest of their military focused primarily on defending the planets from the Germanic Ground Forces. At the moment, Erich was sitting in his cockpit. By now, all the paint had been scratched off his interceptor. The machine was only operable due to the cannibalization of other starfighters which were damaged beyond repair during the war.
The war had been waging on for nearly eight months at this point, and most of the Dvrakian Consortium had fallen. As the vanguard of the invasion, the 1st Armada was left without resupply for months on end, forcing the crews onboard the vessels to become quite creative in how they maintained their ships.
In the entirety of the Germanic Star-Empire's military history, they had never once advanced their troops beyond the reach of their supply lines, having learned from the mistakes of their ancestors on Earth centuries prior. However, with the Naraku Hive Fleet so near to their borders, and getting ever closer with each passing day, the Admiralty was convinced that sacrifices needed to be made to ensure that their plans to use the Dvrakians as a buffer were actually accomplished in time, thus deciding to push past them this once, for victory was in sight.
Of course, the rank and file of the Empire's forces did not know about this great threat which was lurking beyond their borders, and thus, the veterans of the Dvrakian War had become quite disgruntled due to the way they were treated in the conflict.
Erich could not remember the last time he had gotten more than two hours of sleep. By now, even the Dvrakian Fire Whiskey had lost its refreshing effect, and he was becoming quite drowsy as he piloted his interceptor through the orbit of what appeared to be an oceanic world.
Realizing that his eyelids were closing on their own, Erich reached towards his left thigh with his offhand, and grabbed hold of what resembled an EpiPen from 21st Century Earth. However, the container was entirely transparent, revealing the neon green liquid that was contained within it.
Normally Erich would carry four of these things on the left thigh of his flight suit to get him through his twenty-two hour shift, but after only twelve hours of combat, he had already been through three of them. His vision began to fade as he mumbled something that was barely coherent.
"Fug… lassst onne…"
After saying this Erich pressed the top button of the device which revealed a hypodermic needle, which he then jammed through his left thigh, into the femoral artery, which rapidly carried the stimulant through the rest of his body, forcing his eyes open to their maximum width.
Erich felt as if his brain had cleared right up in a single second, and shortly thereafter an eager smile had replaced the drooling gape that as his mouth. He felt as if he were a living god, that no harm could possibly come to him, and as a result he eagerly hit the throttle of his interceptor to the maximum speed, sending him zooming through orbit and towards his allies who were requesting backup.
Either he did not see it, or he did not care, but the hole that was punctured into his pressurized flight suit immediately sealed itself, preventing any and all oxygen from escaping. The interceptor shot through space at a rapid speed, before Erich began to pull back his throttle as he quickly approached his target.
No more than 5,000 kilometers out, there was another interceptor that looked almost exactly like his own, which was taking fire from three hostiles. As a result, Erich flipped the switch on his joystick, activating his missiles as he locked onto all three targets at once.
Normally, a pilot would only be able to lock onto one target at a time but, because of Erich's cyberkinesis, he was able to push the targeting array beyond its limits, and thus, when he pressed the button, three missiles were launched at the target which, despite the enemy's best attempts to launch their countermeasures, the missiles continued towards their targets until detonating on their hulls. Erich screamed through his comms in excitement as he saved his ally's ass, while also eliminating three hostiles in one go.
"Whoo! Take that, you worthless hunks of scrap metal!"
An annoyed voice called out to Erich from the other end of the line, which he recognized as his Wing Commander.
"Dammit Silber, those were mine!"
Erich simply chuckled before responding to the wing commander's complaint with a voice that was unnaturally speedy.
"Sorry, Commander, but you snooze you lose! Besides, I just saved your ass! You owe me!"
Judging by how quickly Erich spat out those words, it did not take the Wing Commander long to realize that Erich had just popped another one of his stims, and thus decided not to argue with the man while he was as high as one could be. Instead, his voice shifted to one of concern as he asked the question which he was not sure that he wanted an answer to.
"Silber, how many of those stims do you have left?"
Erich did not even need to think about the number of stims he had taken before responding to the Commander with a carefree voice.
"That was my last one. I suppose I should go back and get more, huh?"
Contrary to what Erich was expecting, the voice of the commander immediately turned to one filled with anger as he yelled at Erich over the comms with all the fury he could muster.
"You fucking idiot! You took all four of your stims in twelve hours? Get your ass back to the carrier and check in with medical before you overdose! If we end up losing another interceptor because of an overdose, the Admiral will have my ass!"
Erich did not even think about the possibility of an overdose when he had taken all four of his stims becuase his brain had been too exhausted to even calculate the risk. However, now that his mind was fully clear, he realized how badly he had fucked up. Thus, his heart immediately began to palpitate as an overwhelming sense of anxiety filled his mind. He only managed to get out one word before darting back towards the carrier at top speed.
"Roger!"
With this, Erich flew back to the carrier as fast as he could. However, as he was approaching the hangar, he found that his mouth had begun to foam and his muscles had begun to seize. If he did not manage to slow down soon, he would crash right into the hangar and not only blow himself up, but also take quite a few other pilots, and their starfighters, with him.
Unfortunately, he could not manage to control the joystick, nor could he speak properly into his comms to request an immediate landing, thus all he could do was muster all the strength left in his body and force a crash landing onto the deck.
As Erich had approached the landing bay without proper authorization, the point defenses of the capital ship began to fire at him, which battered his shields until there was nothing left. However, he just barely managed to slip past the ship's defenses before his starfighter could be blown apart, and in doing so crashed into the landing bay.
The interceptor skid through the deck, grinding itself apart as it slowly made its way to the other end. Just before the fighter was about to crunch into a pancake against a massive wall, it came to a full stop, where the carrier's quick reaction force rapidly approached the heavily damaged starfighter with their plasma rifles in hand.
Once they managed to force open the shattered cockpit, they found an unconscious pilot who needed immediate medical attention. As for the damage that Erich had caused to the actual carrier, it was minimal, and could easily be repaired once they finally managed to dock back in Imperial Space.
---
Erich awoke on a bed some time later while dressed in nothing but a patient's gown. He did not know how he had gotten into this strange chamber, which he knew to be what was referred to by the Empire as a med bay, but he could guess one of two things had occurred.
Either he died, and was now cloned on some facility within the Empire's borders. Or he had been successfully transported to the medical facility on board the carrier, and stuffed into a med bay while unconscious, which automatically repaired all the damage that his body had received.
One thing was certain: all the fatigue, pain, and stress he had endured over these past eight months had suddenly vanished. It was because of this that he truly believed he had died and been cloned. However, this was not the case, as the medbay quickly opened itself, to reveal that he was indeed sitting in the medical clinic on board the carrier. Standing over Erich was the ship's doctor, who shook his head and sighed before informing his patient of just what had happened.
"Honestly, kid, you're lucky to be alive. It probably would have been more efficient to just euthanize you, and have you cloned. But, the Admiral insisted that all pilots who could be saved must be saved. After all, we're already short staffed as is.
Do you have any idea what kind of damage you have done to your body? Four stimulants in merely twelve hours? What? Were you trying to get yourself killed? Well? Come on! Don't just gawk at me like an idiot, answer me!"
Erich had never before in his life been injured enough to use a medbay, and he was still getting over the idea that no matter how mangled his body was, no matter how much damage had been dealt to his internal organs by the overdose, he had emerged perfectly fine, in fact, he was better than before. After taking a few moments to formulate a proper response, he finally spoke to the doctor.
"I… didn't mean to. I was just so tired that I couldn't perform my duties… I didn't even think about a possible overdose, and instinctively jammed that needle into my thigh. How much damage to the ship did I cause?"
To this, the Doctor scoffed, before informing Erich that he hadn't caused much damage at all.
"You really think that puny fighter of yours is capable of damaging one of these carriers in any significant capacity? The only damage you dealt was to yourself and your interceptor. Fixing you was an easy task, but fixing that damned ship of yours, with the limited supplies we currently have? That is going to be a challenge! Luckily, I became a doctor and not a mechanic. Because I have no idea how they are going to repair that scrapheap.
Now, judging by the fact that you are capable of carrying a conversation, I would say you are no longer my problem. Report to your Wing Commander so he can give you a proper scolding."
After saying this, the Doctor tossed Erich a new flight suit before walking out of the room. He had other patients that he needed to tend to, and now that Erich was out of the med bay, it could be used by someone else. Erich, however, felt a particular sense of dread in his chest, as he just knew it was a matter of certainty that he was going to get chewed out for what he had just done.