I Woke Up Piloting the Strongest Starship, so I Became a Space Mercenary Chapter 2 – Battle’s Aftermath

Translator: SFBaka

“Well, this sure is troubleso.”

Alright, I’ll admit it. This isn’t a dream. But it’ll be really troubleso moving forward. As for why it’s troubleso, that’s because I have absolutely no clue what to do from now on.

Before I had a handle on what was going on, I found myself all alone inside a spaceship smack dab in the middle of space. I don’t know how I got here. I don’t even know if there was any thod to go back ho.

“Maybe there was a cutting-edge VR device capable of full imrsion being developed in secret and I sohow got involved and am now in full-dive or sothing?”

I tried ssing around with the console and pulled up the nu. “Log out!” I scread, but there was nothing resembling a logout nu that ca up. There was nothing that could take away from this present version of reality. How heartless.

In this situation which I can only describe as annoying, I can do little else apart from trying to adapt as much as possible. Humans are adaptable creatures. I’m sure it’ll work out sohow.

“If I change my line of thinking, things may not be so bad after all.”

I have my personal machine with , and my piloting skills don’t seem to be half bad as well. Most of all, I’ve personally confird that this ship has enough firepower to crush any random space pirate ship which cos my way. If so, then living as a rcenary, like in the ga Stella Online was quite doable.

Fortunately, I have enough supplies inside the cargo hold, so I should be able to earn so money hunting down pirates with this ship and my piloting skills.

Furthermore, the total bounty for the pirates I managed to scan and destroy earlier amounts to 19,000 Enel. I don’t have a grasp of the general market prices in this world yet, but the bounty for fully ard pirate ships shouldn’t be too bad.

Considering the market prices in the Stella Online ga, 19,000 Enel wasn’t nearly enough to purchase a spaceship. But replenishing this ship’s energy, ammo, supplies and paying for maintenance should all be within budget, with so room to spare.

“Oh yeah. I gotta retrieve so data and supplies first.”

In Stella Online, you could plunder the wreckage of the pirate ships you destroyed for supplies and data caches. You usually won’t get a lot of money, but there were surprising finds sotis.

By analyzing the data caches, it’s possible to obtain info about the surrounding space sector. If you’re lucky, you might even get to obtain the coordinates of the pirate’s main base.

Once you obtain the coordinates of the pirate base, you could initiate an attack and destroy them in order to plunder all the treasures they’ve managed to save up. Alternatively, you can sell the info to the military stationed in the system in exchange for a hefty reward. Both are quite profitable prospects.

I piloted Krishna and stripped away all supplies, data caches and relatively undamaged weaponry from the pirate ship wreckages. Stella Online spacecraft ca standard with drones for collecting materials. Naturally, my Krishna also ca equipped with them.

“There’s nothing particularly valuable huh.”

The pirate’s supplies mainly consisted of low-quality junk food and brewed liquor. Although brewed liquor sells at a reasonable value, depending on the local space empire governing the star system, there were tis when they were deed illegal goods. This item was quite the hot-potato.

Well, even if they’re illegal goods, the worst that could happen if I get caught with them was the liquor getting confiscated and getting an earful from the local authorities. It would have been quite dangerous if they had illegally captured slaves or drugs on-board instead. On top of them getting confiscated, you’d get slapped with hefty fines, get banished from the star system or worse, get attacked by the system military on sight.

“Oh.”

The data cache was a hit. In addition to the coordinates of the main space stations in this star system, I also got the location of the pirate base. Even if I just decided to sell this info, it’ll net a considerable amount more than the total bounty of those three pirate ships I shot down earlier.

Apparently, there were no habitable planets in this particular star system based on the data I’ve obtained. There seem to be a lot of asteroid belts rich in mineral resources, and it looks like mining bases and space prisons (where they force prisoners to mine in a harsh environnt) and trading colonies were scattered throughout the system instead.

“There’s no data for the other neighboring star systems huh…”

Unfortunately, only the data for this particular star system was available, and I couldn’t find any map data for the ones surrounding it.

I still don’t know where exactly in the galaxy this star system was located. In order to find that out, I’d have to connect to an information network on a station or colony nearby.

“If I have to go to one, then it’ll definitely have to be a trading colony.”

For the ti being, I inputted a course for the largest trading colony nearby. According to the info I just obtained, there was a military base located there too. It would be convenient if I managed to claim the bounty money and sell off the info regarding the pirate headquarters there.

I set the main generator output to cruise mode and pointed the bow towards the direction of the trading colony. The throttle gradually increased, and after sufficient acceleration was reached, the Hyperspeed Drive was activated.

“Whoah!…”

The scenery before my eyes suddenly stretched out, and the stars, which looked like spots of light earlier, turned into shining lines that flowed backward. I wasn’t knowledgeable about the technical details regarding the Hyperspeed Drive, and Stella Online also didn’t elaborate on it much, but this function was mainly used for traveling between distant coordinates within star systems.

I confird that the scenery I was gazing at from inside the cockpit was actually moving, so I think it simply was sothing like moving at extrely trendous speeds. Since the ship didn’t crash into space debris or asteroid fields along the way, I’m guessing it also makes use of a special evasion program or technology as well.

By the way, this Krishna is also equipped with the function to navigate between different star systems themselves. It’s called Hyperdrive, and it makes use of a subspace corridor as a shortcut to travel at speeds much faster than light in order to reach other star systems. Of course, I have no idea about the theories involved either.

It’s important for both the ga and the players to have a thod to travel between different star systems, so don’t ask about how it works cause it just does dude! It was that kind of thing. I don’t really care either way since I’m not a Sci-fi otaku or anything…

There’s also an ultra long-distance traveling thod which makes use of wormhole gates. These are usually managed by NPC-run space empires, and its use was oftentis severely restricted. So players seed to have gained access by increasing their contributions to the local space empires in their respective spheres of activity, but a solo-play rcenary like didn’t have access to that particular thod.

I passed by a gas giant while thinking about the wonders of space travel. I suddenly had the urge to stop the Hyperspeed drive to take in the magnificent cosmic sights, but I managed to hold myself back and continued to rush towards the trading colony. If I dicked around like that, there was a good chance I’d be attacked by space pirates again.

What’s needed to be prioritized right now was not satisfying my intellectual curiosity, but reaching the trading colony within a safe zone as soon as possible and obtaining more information. Afterward, I’ll have plenty of ti to observe giant gas planets, asteroid fields and any other mysterious cosmic sight I’d never had the opportunity to see in person before. Yeah, that’ll be the case. At least, I hope it would be.

I didn’t have any particular fixation towards things involving sci-fi or space, but even I would feel like sightseeing when presented with such magnificent sceneries. Space is actually quite a lonely place. I should treasure this newfound sense of curiosity from now on.

While I was busy mulling over my feelings towards the greater universe, Krishna’s support AI inford that we were nearing the trading colony. I tried to brace myself for the mont when the Hyperspeed Drive gets deactivated, but it went smoother than expected. What about the effects of inertia? Perhaps the ship is equipped with a system that effectively nullifies it or sothing.

I operated the cockpit’s side display like usual and sent a docking request to the hangar bay of the trading colony.

[This is the Port Administration Departnt of Colony - Termaine Pri. We’ve received your docking request. Um, Captain…? I’m sorry, but the data about your identification seems to be corrupted.]

“Eh? Ah… this ship’s official designation is the Krishna. My na is—”

Na. Na, huh? My real na’s sothing so common you’d find a hundred others nad like if you bothered to look so…

…I’ll just use the in-ga na I confird earlier instead.

“It’s Hiro. I’m Captain Hiro.” [1. Note: Regarding Hiro’s na choice: The raws have his in-ga na in katakana, which is usually used to write loan words from English and other foreign languages. So, it may seem that Hiro is just your typical Japanese na, but the context is that he’s using a foreign-sounding na and not your normal Japanese one. Still confused? Don’t worry and just roll with it lol]

Thus, a rcenary nad Captain Hiro was born in this galaxy. It was August 10, 2397 of the Graccan Imperial Calendar.