42. Astral’s Search

*beep ...

*beep…

*beep

In a small cockpit, enough for only one person to squeeze in, was a girl with long red flaming hair, staring at the user interface of a radar. The cockpit itself was dark and the only source of light within it was the red glowing lines that seemed to fill the entire place. Even her buttons and displays were full of red. The girl herself wore a skin-tight stylised space jumpsuit with red glowing lines on it as well.

Every time the radar let out a beeping sound, the red-haired girl would look around her displays, within it the view of the cold empty space outside of her cockpit. Every once in a while, the red-haired girl would look around her displays to check out the area before looking back at the radar. She was searching for something and she paid full attention to what she was doing, fearing that she may have missed something if she was careless.

That concentration was broken when she heard the sound of her communicator ringing. Like an alarm clock, the piercing soundwaves penetrated her eardrums, irritating her. She coded her communicator with different ring tones depending on the person trying to contact her. The alarm clocks ringing belongs to a subset of people who annoyed her the most. Looking towards the display, she could see the callsign of the person calling her.

‘E’

Letting out a sigh, she brought her ship to a full stop before lying her back on the chair she was sitting on. With her index finger, she pressed a button on a small display on her hand rest. A large monitor display then came out and filled her entire vision.

*Kachak

The monitor turned on and a young girl with long silver hair appeared. The young girl flashed a smile towards the red-haired girl. At first glance, it looked like any normal smile. But looking closely, one could see that the young girl was smirking slightly. Her eyes looked down towards the red-haired girl, giving off the idea that she was in a higher position.

“...” The red-haired woman stared at her in silence.

“Why the long face, Astral? Are you in such a foul mood that you won’t even greet a friend? Put a smile on that face once in a while!” The silver-haired girl, E, said to Astral in a carefree tone. Her voice was like any other young human girls, squeaky, high pitch and cute, but most of all annoying.

“... What do you want?” Astral said in a grumpy tone.

“Nothing much. How’s the search going on? Any results? Blanks all over at this side.”

Astral twitched her eyebrows at her answer before giving a reply. “... none so far. I haven’t found it yet. I’m starting to think that it’s not in this quadrant. I’m doing one last check and moving on the to next one soon.”

“Hoooh. I see," E replied before starting to comb her hair with her fingers. The situation turned into an awkward silence.

“...”

“..."

“Anything else? Did something happen?”

“Hoh hoh. What? I can’t just call up a friend to have a small chat? Why must something happen for me to call you?” She said with a smirk, clearly playing with the red hair.

“If you have nothing serious to talk about, then go away. I’m hanging up,” Astral said as she reached her finger for the end communications button.

“Well… I never said nothing happened,” E let out a small giggle just as Astral was about to press it.

Letting out a grunt, Astral replied: “Urgh… What?”

“Jeez, would it kill you to chill out a bit?” E let out a small sigh. "I'm receiving a bunch of warp signatures appearing on the sector. Six in total. The long-range radar took a while to intercept the signals, I estimated it has been a week since the most recent warp. Big targets."

Astral raised her eyebrows as she heard this. “Are you sure that they aren’t civilians?”

“I filtered out the ones going from and to Ashen Port. Besides, why would civilians warp into the sector? If anything they should be warping out of it. No reason to warp to that quadrant to be fair.”

"Where?"

"Near the port Little Foot. Or at least what was left of it. Three coming in the northwest of the galactic poll, one from the north, two from warp within the Lawless Maw Zone into the Little Foot Quadrant."

"Three from the northeast… that must be the three ships from the Royal Navy. Seems like the intel was correct," Astral said to 'E'.

"Yep, three Victorian Class Cruisers if the intel can be trusted. And the one from the north is presumably the one from Crimson Tide."

Astral clicked her tongue. "The other country acted fast. It wasn't even that long since I started searching…." Astral mumbled to herself. She then threw a glare at 'E'.

"What about the other two signatures? You mentioned six?"

"They came in from the zone itself. One large signature and one smaller one. The smaller one is off the radar by now, perhaps a small ship or something. The larger one… I think I got an idea on who it is.

"The Dawning Star Battlecruiser?" Astral speculated.

"What else can it be? It's the largest ship in the zone. Other than me of course," 'E' replied before giving out a haughty laugh. "Ho, ho, ho."

"Dammit, even Dawn Star is sending ships here," Astral muttered as she clenched her fist. "Any ideas on the small one? Astral asked.

"No idea. I suspect it may be a Dawning Star ship as well, but who knows, it could be a pirate. The place is full of those losers.

Astral let out a sigh. "Things have just become more complicated."

"They aren't the only ones going there either, ya know?"

"...no, don't tell me…"

The silver-haired girl let out a small laugh. "The higher-ups have caught wind of the situation and are sending a small group there. Protecting the borders from pirates and external threats was what they say, but we both know they just want a piece of that relic."

Astral slouched down further on her seat before letting out another sigh, the biggest one so far.

"What’cha going to do now?"

"Isn't that obvious? They are heading to Little Foot. Something must be there if everyone is going there."

"We won't be friends there, you know.”

Astral’s eyes widened for a while when she heard ‘E’ say that. Her expression then went to an understanding look as she figured out something.

“I’m the nearest to the place, so they put me back into active duty. I’ll be rendezvousing with the group and attempt to intercept the outsiders. I’m sorry for backing out of the search all of a sudden, but I got a duty to this country. The next time we meet I’ll be shooting you as a trespasser,” ‘E’ said as she continued combing her hair, her smile never fading.

“Can’t be seen teaming up with a terrorist, huh.”

“Yep. The captain sends his regard. I’ve dropped a supply pod for you in this location. Consider this our apologies. We’ll make it up to you one day. I’ll see you later then,” ‘E’ said before turning off the communications.

Soon after the communications were turned off, Astral received a secured message, indicating the location of the supply pod that ‘E’ was referring to. She quickly memorised the coordinates before deleting the message. She then pressed a few more buttons on her control panel. Her aim was to warm up her jump drive.

“What a tasteless person. Any person smart enough would know this is a trap ‘E’. Supplies my foot,” Astral muttered out loud.

She displayed the map of the entire sector, the Lawless Maw Zone. Within it was the red blip indicating her location. She was near the farther end of the zone, very close to pirate territory. Astral identified the location of Little Foot Quadrant before updating her map, adding markers to indicate the presence of other ships. Three Royal ships in the northeast, a Crimson tide ship in the north, a Dawn Star from the east and an unknown ship. Then she placed a marker that was larger than the rest, the F.U. fleet.

‘Looks like I’m alone in this again. I wasted too much time in the wrong areas,’  Astral thought to herself as she observed the map.

The Lawless Maw Zone was as the name suggests. It was a place where anything goes, no law and definitely no protection from the strong. However, that doesn’t mean there was no interest in the place by government bodies. On the outside, it looked like any unclaimed open neutral zone. However, if one looked further into the zone, one would realise that the place is actually a strife filled place. Organizations of various powers often use this place as a way to do small scale proxy wars. The place was filled to the brim with pirates and smugglers

To make things worse, this zone was rumoured to contain a relic of sorts, hidden within the mass void of space. Alien technology that could change the power balance of the strongest nations. Top secret government bodies have started sending small search groups to investigate this claim, making the zone even more dangerous for the common folk.

‘Still, Little Foot, huh? I haven’t been there in ages…’ Astral thought as she recalled her days at the port.

She was much younger and much more inexperienced at that time. Little foot used to be a neutral port where people of all walks of life, newbies or veterans alike, could find a good living. Now, the neutral port which helped Astral a lot when she was just a beginner with nowhere to go was no more. The owners had long moved the spaceport to another place, fearing the escalating conflict between the powers in the zone.

[Jump Drive Warmed Up]

A message on her user interface showed up. Seeing this, Astral stretched her body before getting into a comfortable sitting position. Her two hands moved to the controls on the ship as she got ready for jump.

[Jumping]

The ship vibrated at high frequencies and all of a sudden, Astral’s vision turned to darkness. She felt nausea, butterflies in her stomach and a small headache, needles pricking at her forehead. She couldn’t breathe and her body was stiff as if frozen in time. Just as fast as it came, everything went to normal and her vision was now restored.

[Jump Completed]

She could tell that she was in a different place as the view in her displays has changed considerably. The sight of stars and the nebula was different. However, to confirm if she did indeed arrive at her destination, she took a look at her map. She gave a nod when she did indeed arrive at her location— the asteroid fields near Little Foot.

Immediately after confirming, she revved up her thrusters and zoomed out of the place at high speeds. She plans to search out the area and lay traps before entering the Little Foot quadrant. She was against capital ships of different nations, after all, she needed a little bit of planning.

***Sometime Later***

“What the….”

“That fool. I even gave him a warning…" Astral said as she did a small facepalm.

"Time to teach this fool another lesson," Astral let out a sigh as she reached for the communicator. She set the setting from private to open.

"Hey, you! The ship in black and blue…."