Corpo Age-Chapter 258: One By One

Mylan - Nova Tech

Mylan groaned upon hearing the alarm ring out across Europa Station, his new post.

Everything had been a mess recently. Both his personal life, business life, and just pretty much everything all around. He was happy with his comfy position as a navigator for one of the many ships his company owned. Most of the time, he just set the coordinates, and then he only needed to monitor things. It was a comfortable job with a high salary.

However, that all changed when the war had suddenly broken out, and the participating party was SocialCorp, of all things. His company even aligned with one of the parties and had been dragged in. This meant he was now part of it as well.

He was reassigned from his cargo ship to one of the old warships they had sitting in storage. Logistics was still the name of the game, but he was undoubtedly participating in the war now. That was why he dreaded the alarm so much when he heard it. People died in wars and many of them. It was the last thing he wanted to be involved with.

“I thought the frontline was nowhere near us,” he muttered.

“Less talking and more action!” a gruff middle-aged man yelled. “To your stations, now! Our ship will be sortieing shortly.”

Everyone in the breakroom snapped to attention and carried out their superior’s instructions without hesitation. While they grumbled complaints, they were disciplined enough to do what they were trained to do.

Mylan wasn’t unfamiliar with security protocols. Pirates occasionally wreaked havoc, so the things he needed to do were the same. It was just that their opponents were likely a lot more trained and well-equipped.

The crew swiftly rushed onto the bridge and assumed their positions. They went through checklists and started up the necessary systems for the ship to fly out into the darkness of space.

Everyone eligible to be in the bridge was relatively high-ranking, and during emergency situations, information was freely shared. The crew was soon updated on the latest intel about the situation.

“We’re deploying under the first guard flotilla. Be sure to linkup with your counterparts on the flagship,” the captain ordered.

“Yes, sir!”

At least that means I can leave all the work to someone else. We just have to follow their lead.

Mylan proceeded to carry out his work, ensuring their ship would stay in the correct position of their formation. Many of these systems were automated, but the navigators were still a necessity to every ship. If anything occurred the disrupted their course, it was their job to deal with it.

Very soon, their flotilla took off from the hangar and the tension grew. None of Mylan’s crewmates were militarized before this. They ran a simple logistic ship. The pressure was on for them, especially those who managed the weapons and defenses.

“New orders, Mylan! We’re to split up to close off the enemy fleet’s escape path. Plot out a course for us.”

“Yes, sir!”

It only took a moment for an experienced navigator to understand the data he received from the flagship. He plotted out a course that met the requirements, but he became more disgruntled as he worked. That was because splitting up to surround the enemy only sounded good on paper. In action, it meant they would be alone during the encirclement, making them vulnerable if the enemy fleet chose to focus them.

Of course, if this happened, their allies would take the opportunity to pile in from different directions, but that didn’t change the fact that the decoy ship would incur significant casualties.

The higher-up’s orders basically meant there would be one unlucky ship in the fleet. It was a risk they were willing to take in order to vanquish the enemy.

“Do we really have to chase them?” Mylan inadvertently muttered under his breath.

“Mylan! Keep your thoughts to yourself. An enemy is an enemy. Since they dare to attack us, we naturally have to pay them back. Even if they are only a small fleet.”

“Yes, sir. Understood, sir!”

As their flotilla gave chase, Mylan carefully read every bit of data coming to him. Usually, he would just goof off, barely paying any attention, but now that his life was on the line, he was locked in on even the most mundane information.

As a navigator, the most relevant readings being transferred to him were naturally from their sensors.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Every reading showed that they were in the clear, but that didn’t satisfy Mylan. He continued his search for anything that could go wrong. It was why he was the most prepared when the situation made a drastic turn.

“Captain! Huge energy emissions from the ship at the rear of our formation. It seems—explosions have taken place aboard their vessel!”

“Full power on scanners now. Direct it toward the direction the attacks came from!”

“But sir—there’s no trajectory data recorded. The sensors didn’t pick up anything.”

“How can that be? Are you telling me their ship just exploded because of an accident? During a mission against the enemy? What are the chances of that?”

While the captain and his crew puzzled over the situation, Mylan was examining every active reading available to him. His desire to survive fueled him, and he worked like never before.

Radiation and gravity field readings are good. Active scans show nothing. No nearby energy emission either. The nearest significant body of mass is—more than far enough away. What happened can very well be an accident.

His suspicions were quickly overturned within a minute. A second round of explosions could be detected on another ship. Even a fool would realize that they were under attack! The flotilla scrambled as soon as they noticed that.

“Evasive maneuvers now! Have the marines take a sweep of the ship. As the captain, I am placing us under level two lockdown!”

They all panicked as everything was pointing toward capable saboteurs within their midst. With no outward readings of any ships, two consecutive explosions could only mean someone had snuck on those ships. There was nothing scarier for the crew to realize a bomb could go off on their ship at any time.

If there really was one, then their chances of survival were close to nil. The harshness of the vacuum wasn’t something humans could overcome with. Their fancy spacesuits could only protect them for so long. They needed to avoid any damage to their ship at all costs.

Unfortunately for them, their situation only got worse. Seeing two of their ships take severe damage, the prey they had been chasing actually turned around! The hunted quickly became the hunter. Without further commands, their flotilla was to stand their ground and engage the enemy.

Realizing this, Mylan’s mind spun at a breakneck speed. He ran through numerous possibilities, desperate to search for one that would lead to his survival.

If only the company would allow me to quit. If I survive this, I would just ignore any rules and take off myself if there is some place to hide.

Space battles were not as exciting as they sounded. Nothing much happened, at least for someone like me who didn’t have any particular roles. The crew took care of everything. The only thing that changed took place on the various screens on the bridge.

I watched as we stalked the enemy fleet that newly emerged to chase down our allies. They had no idea we were there. They were too focused on their prey, and our stealth tech did its wonders.

Still, we had to approach this with caution. The energy shield tech of our enemies was several levels more advanced than what we were used to. Then there were all the defensive emplacements around the station to worry about the moment we revealed ourselves. We couldn’t split our resources to disable those turrets and overwhelm the enemy’s energy shields at the same time.

We patiently bided our time while they chased our allies further and further away. What we waited on wasn’t the captain’s intuition on when we should attack or when the enemy’s formation got sloppy. The thing we relied on was much more logical and comprised careful calculations.

We waited until the range from their defensive emplacements grew to a level that would no longer threaten us. That way, we could divert more power onto offense, allowing us to quickly dispatch our foe with fewer things to worry about.

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We did just that.

Unbeknownst to our foes, the four sets of main particle beam cannons at the front of the ship charged a massive amount of energy. The moment we were at a comfortable range from their defenses, we opened fire without hesitation.

Of course, our attack wasn’t so simple-minded. When I designed the ship, stealth was always the focus. As an expert in the field, I naturally realized our most vulnerable moment was when we attacked. It was just too easy for others to trace the trajectory of your attacks and lock down on your location.

While it was possible to use hit-and-run tactics, where the ship took some time to go into hiding again, it just seemed ineffective in real combat. Strictly harassing the enemy won’t win any battles.

At the same time, it was practically impossible to hide the signature of the particle beams entirely. Energy was energy. There was only so much you could mask. The more powerful it was, the harder it was to hide, but that power was needed to destroy the enemy.

In the end, I took a different approach. If I couldn’t make our weapons undetectable, I would just have to make the enemy ships unable to detect anything.

To accomplish that, I studied various sensors that were popular. I had our ship scan for these sensor modules on enemy hulls and created an effective electromagnetic spoofer with my electrical engineering knowledge. Instead of overloading and jamming enemy sensors, it would feed false information back.

It was much preferable to jamming because it would delay the enemy from finding out about or presence. We could fire off another salvo without being identified right away.

The range was low, but with our impressive cloaking technology, we were able to get close enough to fool all the sensors.

Using this combo, we started picking off the enemy ships one by one. Of course, I was the one to control our weapon systems.

The system alerts informed me of the effectiveness of each salvo. Hundreds die with every shot, and one particularly well-placed shot caused an entire vessel to explode.

+1240 EXP

The experience points were rolling in. I needed to tell myself not to get too excited over it. I still needed to capture as many hulls as I could, so I could repurpose them for our own fleet.

The war will soon be heating up.