37. Unseen Enemy

“Who is the bastard that attacked me?! Argghh!!” Abyssal roared out before getting up and rushed towards the weapons control room, ignoring Meica’s and Kuon’s words of worry. She then took manual control of the ship and engaged all defensive measures— full power to the radars, cameras and warmed up the defensive turrets all over the Maxwell. She then moved herself nearby an asteroid, taking advantage of the asteroid for a little bit of cover.

As she was rushing, Abyssal checked through the view of all her exterior cameras and her radars to find the bastard who blew up her thrusters. Unfortunately, her radar and her camera could see nothing. The only thing she could see was her left thrusters burning.

‘Where is the asshole that shot me? Did he run away?’ Abyssal thought to herself. She then brought her attention to her left thruster.

Although damaged, taking a hit from a missile according to Abby, the system reports revealed that it was still functional. Trying her best to shrug off the pain, Abyssal ordered Abby to begin damage control on the thrusters. The fire suppression system engaged and a few drones came to the thrusters to patch up a few holes here and there.

Abyssal let out a sigh of relief when she noticed that the emergency repairs were doing well. If this keeps up, she wouldn’t have to worry about losing half of her thrust in deep space. At this rate, she could still repair her thrusters using whatever resources she had at the moment.

That false sense of relief lasted only a short while as another explosion occured right after she finished damage control.

*Boom!

“Ouch, ouch, ouch!” Abyssal yelled further as she rolled around in place.

[Missile impact on right thrusters. Efficiency reduced to 80%. Initiating emergency damage control.] Abby told Abyssal about the current situation.

‘What the hell? Where did that come from?!’ Abyssal yelled out internally. She was monitoring her radar and cameras the entire time. Not once did she see a ship or a missile appear.

“Abyssal! You okay?” “Master, what’s going on?”

Meica and Kuon asked Abyssal when they saw her yell out in pain. Apparently, they were following behind her

“Urgh…”: Abyssal let out a grunt. “We are under attack! You two, get to the bridge now. I’m moving to the weapons control room.”

“Under attack?! By what?” Kuon asked.

“No idea,” Abyssal quickly replied before flying off into the distance.

Meica and Kuon nodded to each before they both rushed to the bridge, the safest part of the ship.

* * * * *

A few missiles hit to the thrusters and intense rounds of yelling later, Abyssal had managed to bring herself to relative safety. The ship itself was currently within a small hole inside a large kilometre-wide asteroid. Unless the ship has enough firepower to break through the entire asteroid, the only way for someone to actually come up to her and attack her was through the entrance of the hole.

Inside the Maxwell’s very familiar weapons control room was Abyssal’s personal drone looking intensely at the radar display and the various internal and external cameras of the ship. She was in a foul mood and her glare was so intense it could burn a hole through someone.

It has been a few minutes since the last attack on the ship and things were quiet, awfully quiet. Abyssal never let up her alert status and constantly checked the cameras for any appearance of a ship or something— both internal and external cameras. For some reason, she couldn’t detect this particular attacker with her radar systems. It was as if the enemy was completely hidden from her. Checking the cameras was her only way of actually spotting the attacker should it strike again.

She was also checking all her internal cameras to make sure it wasn’t some sort of inside job. There was a low chance of that happening, but a possibility. There could be someone who somehow snuck into the ship and set off charges or something.  Though she doubted that was the case. The most probable possibility was that she was being hunted down by...

‘A stealthy ship…’ Abyssal muttered to herself.

Kuon had mentioned to her about super stealthy ships, a speciality of the Dawning Star Empire. It was most likely the enemy that attacked them was a ship from that nation.

“Arghhh! What’s with my luck dammit?! This is the second unannounced attack to me! What did I do this time!? I played safe almost every way up to this point!” Abyssal scratched her imaginary head.

Abyssal let out a sigh after raging. ‘Abby, how long more till we can warp out of this place?’ Abyssal asked.

[Warming up of warp drives underway. Calculation of exit route of asteroid field 20% complete. Estimate time of completion: 30 minutes.]

‘Who would have thought that you need time to warm up the warp drives, huh? Anyway we can expedite the process?’ Abyssal asked Abby.

If you can’t win a fight, then running away is the next best option. The only problem was that warping was not an instant thing in this universe apparently. There needs to be a significant time to warm up and charge up the warp drive. Then, there was a need to actually calculate a safe route towards their destination, lest they just ram into a large asteroid or something.

[Exit of asteroid will reduce the calculation required by 40%. Further travel outside of the asteroid field will reduce calculation further.]

‘Exit our safe haven huh? Won’t we just get shot to pieces if we go out there.’ Abyssal thought to herself before looking out of her small hole in the asteroid. Going out there would probably mean she would get attacked again by the unknown ship or whatever it was that was attacking her.

[Entity Abyssal will need to exit the asteroid in order to initiate warp. Outcome similar, the only difference is the time taken.] Abby said to Abyssal.

‘That’s so dangerous though…’ Abyssal let out another sigh.

‘I wonder how the others are doing?’ Abyssal thought to herself as she took a look at the cameras in the bridge. Through the cameras, she could see Meica just sitting calmly at her station. She was seated nicely and buckled up at her seat, prepared for any sudden manoeuvres. Kuon, on the other hand, was walking frantically about, moving left and right in worry. It was such a weird sight for Abyssal. It was as if the two swapped personalities.

‘Why is the first timer in space more calmed than the super-advanced living core who fought a war before?’ Abyssal asked herself.

That question would not be answered when suddenly, a loud warning message raised to the top of Abyssal’s consciousness. A large pop-up screen appeared in front of Abyssal showing a small missile coming right onto Abyssal’s location. It looked to be quite far away from her location but it was moving towards her at extreme speeds. Abyssal couldn’t confirm it, but she could tell it was actually gaining speed towards her.

[Missile detected, impact to ship within six seconds. Unable to determine launch location] Abby warned.

“Wha-what-what?! Shoot it down! Shoot it down!” Abyssal yelled out in panic before taking control of her laser turrets to shoot down the missile.

It is not easy to shoot down a speeding missile that is speeding towards you, though she somehow managed to do so. One of the laser bolts hit the missile head-on and it exploded in front of Abyssal, just shy a few seconds before impact.

Letting out a sigh of relief, Abyssal went back to looking at her camera’s once again. Though her relieved face soon turned into a distorted look as she saw a few more missiles coming towards her.

She yelled out in panic and tried her best to shoot them down, but it was a futile attempt, of course. The missiles got past her zone of defence and smashed right into Abyssal, causing a few explosions on her bow and a single explosion on her thrusters. Her panicked yell turned into a scream of pain as she felt the pain akin to having a hornet’s sting.

Looking at the bright side, the missiles didn’t do that much damage to her. She could probably take on a bunch of them and still survive. The bad thing is that she had no way of actually fighting back. Can’t shoot at something you can’t see, after all. Considering that the enemy was aiming at her thrusters nonstop, there was a huge possibility that the enemy didn’t actually want her dead, but rather wanted her alive. The enemy was trying to immobilise Abyssal.

Why? Who knows.

All that Abyssal knew was that she needed to get out of the place as soon as possible before that could happen.

“Alright, looks like camping is not an option. Abby! How fast can we calculate a way out of here if we exit the asteroid field? Also how much CPU can we use exactly right now?” Abyssal asked as she endured the pain of having a hole in her hull integrity.

[Reduction of about 50 to 70% in terms of calculation. CPU available for usage: 12%.]

“Good enough for me. I’m getting the hell out of this rock. I want all available CPU power towards spotting these missiles and shooting them down. Also, deploy the Fierca. I got an idea,” Abyssal gave out her order as she took control of the ship.

[Affirmative. Routing 80% of power to the CPU and weapon’s system. Deploying S.A.S. Abyssal(Fierca)]

Abyssal then cracked her imaginary fingers. “I don’t know if you are some sort of pirate raider or some sort of stupid griefer, but you aren’t taking me out that easy! I’ll show you what it means to underestimate me.”

“Full power to thrusters! I HAVE CONTROL!”

Zenatonium Acquired: 360gCredits Total : 13890S.A.S. Abyssal (Fierca Class) Specifications: Ship Dimensions: L: 60m H:  26.1m in height Acceleration and deceleration limit: 30 km/s² Speed Limit: 300 km/s Rate of turn: 16°/s Power Produce: 315 MJ/s

Lancetech(obsolete) Twin Mass Drivers Mk.1 Specifications: Rate of fire: 6 shots per second x 2 Energy Used Per Second : 600 MJ/s x 2 Energy Used Per Shot : 100 MJ Ammunition remaining : 134

Lancetech 350° Omni-directional cameras (Full Power Mode): Energy Usage: 55MJ/s

S.A.S. Abyssal (Maxwell Class) Specifications: Ship Dimensions: L:210m, H: 63m, W80m Acceleration and deceleration limit: 14 KM/s2 Acceleration, 7km/s2 Deceleration Speed Limit: 380 km/s Rate of turn: 7°/s Power Produce: 1700 MJ/s, 300MJ/s(Backup reactor)

Abyss Fire Laser Turret MK.2 (Turret Version) Specifications Rate of fire :12 shots per second Energy used per second : 80 MJ Energy used per shot : 6.667 MJ Thrusters currently damage. Efficiency reduce by 30%