Brief Respite

After having breakfast, we decided to finally depart to our next destination,

the Sierra star system – a place with a bustling resort planet as its main draw.

It became hard for us to do any pirate hunting on our own in the Alein star

system because of the independent anti-pirate mobile fleet led by Major

Serena. It would be inefficient if we insisted on fighting over them for scraps

now that the main pirate base in this system has been successfully crushed.

"Roger!"

"Do your thing like always, Elma."

"Got it. Leave the subsystem controls to me."

The state of the ship was all green. The self-diagnostics check performed by

the ship AI didn't detect a single problem.

"We have clearance."

"Great. We're heading out."

I released the docking mechanism, retracted the landing gear, and slowly

flew out of the colony. I did it at a slow enough speed in order to avoid

colliding with other ships as we headed out of the colony. If I mess up badly,

we'll possibly end up crashing and triggering a huge chain explosion

accident. If that ever happened, we'd have to pay for the damages to other

ships as well as the colony itself, apart from the repair fee for our own ship,

even if we do manage to survive the accident.

"Um, our gate passage number is 3. We're going next, after that yellow

transport ship."

"Gotcha."

Ships rushing through gates all at once during launch procedures may

possibly cause major accidents to occur as well. So in order to prevent that,

ships are only allowed to launch out when their turn comes up. Getting

number 3 was quite a lucky break since we didn't have to wait long.

"It's our turn."

"Okay. I'll make sure to be a model driver at least until we get out of the

colony."

"Yes."

"Causing an accident near the gate is a pretty serious offense after all..."

Elma made a faraway look. She may have possibly been involved in one in

the past. Because it may cause interference with other ships within the

colony, the energy shield output needs to be set to minimum while inside.

After a few moments, the yellow ship finally managed to fully launch out of

the gate, making it our turn.

"Let's go, Hiro-sama."

"Yeah."

I slowly led the ship forward until we passed through the specialized airtight

barrier covering the colony, separating it from the coldness of space. It was a

mysterious barrier that allowed solid objects like ship hulls to pass through

but trapped the air inside the colony interior. I think it's one of the most

mysterious devices I've ever encountered in this dimension.

After passing through the barrier, we finally reached open space. We

increased the generator output and accelerated away from the colony.

"Please set the coordinates on the nav-computer, Mimi."

"Yes. Course is now set."

Mimi operated the console in front of the Operator seat and inputted the

coordinates for the target star system in the nav-computer. The data popped

up on my screen as well. After receiving the data, I pointed the bow toward

the direction of the target destination.

"FTL drive, charging start."

"Roger. FTL drive, countdown."

Elma followed my order and started firing up the FTL drive.

"5, 4, 3, 2, 1... FTL drive, activate."

After the sound of an explosion, the Krishna disappeared from normal space;

only leaving behind light trails in its wake. The formerly stationary stars in

the far distance started moving.

"Currently heading to the Pamoni star system... Final stop: Sierra star

system. It's four nodes away from here via Hyperlane. Hyper Drive,

charging start."

"Charging Hyper Drive."

"Hyperlane link complete."

"Countdown. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1– Hyper Drive, activate."

The space around the ship began to distort further, along with the lights

surrounding it. In the next instant, a bright flash of myriad lights enveloped

us, and Krishna finally entered hyperspace. Our small ship started to journey

within the bright torrents of lights. Though in actual practice, there weren't

any loud sounds that rang out during the process. Space is a vacuum after all.

"And done. We can finally relax a bit."

Generally, traveling through hyperspace is done through the ship's autopilot.

The traveling time is fairly long, and the bow of the ship simply needs to

keep pointing in the direction of the light flow.

The standard practice is to leave one person in charge of monitoring the

autopilot navigation, just in case some trouble does occur. I only heard of

this practice from Elma though.

In Stella Online, traveling between star systems didn't really take hours to

complete. If it was, then it would have been criticized as a crappy game. It

was basically just activating the Hyper Drive, getting on the Hyperlane, and

instantly arriving at the target destination.

"So what are we gonna do about monitoring duty?"

"Um, do we really need to have one of us on monitoring duty?"

Mimi asked a bit doubtfully.

"I wonder. I just heard it from Elma, so I decided on doing it. I can't really

say if there's a fundamental need for it or not. Even I'm a bit reluctant about

it, honestly. The autopilot is fully capable of doing the minor adjustments

and course corrections by itself, and it would also sound an alarm if there

was any sort of trouble."

After saying so, I turned my gaze toward Elma. After hearing my and

Mimi's doubts, Elma gave an answer.

"Yep. That was a lie."

"Eh?"

"What did you say?"

"Well, we're going to spend quite a lot of time without anything to do in

particular, right…? I just thought of taking advantage of it so we can spend

some time with each other alone. In shifts, of course."

Elma told the honest truth and turned her face away from the two of us. I

see.

"Okay. Well, let's just not leave anyone on guard duty then."

"H-Hey..."

"It's just a matter of keeping alert in the off-chance of an emergency

happening, right? I think forcefully implementing shifts and losing sleep

because of it is kinda ridiculous."

"T-That's… You're right, but…"

"It doesn't sound so bad to experience a laid back lifestyle every once in a

while, right?"

"So that's your real aim?"

Elma gave me a hard stare. Well, it's sort of like a man's romance, yeah.

Well, I was still pretty laid back even when I did monitoring duty in the

cockpit last time, so it really doesn't matter in the end. You'd be spending

tens of hours inside a small ship… In some cases, it may even take hundreds

of hours.

You won't be able to connect to the galactic net while in hyperspace, so you

really can't browse online. If you didn't prepare stuff for killing time like

games, holo-vids, or e-books, the only option you have left is doing stuff like

exercising in the training room, eating a meal or two, taking a bath, and

sleeping.

Basically, you'd have a lot of idle time. In that case, there's only one other

thing couples who have already bared their bodies and hearts to each other

can do. It's probably one of the reasons why there were a lot of families with

tons of kids in the eras when there were little entertainment options

available.

"Okay then. You're dismissed, folks. As the captain of this ship, I approve

the start of the free time period."

"Understood."

"Oh geez... Really, now..."

"Well, it'll be a fairly long journey, so let's just take this time to relax, okay?

Did you manage to get something like a tourist information guide for the

Sierra system, Mimi?"

"Yes, I have!"

"Great. Let's all have a look at the dining room. I'm really curious about the

stuff on a resort planet. C'mon Elma."

"W-Wait! You don't have to push me!"

I pushed Elma from behind and headed to the dining area. There are no more

annoying third parties, so let's take this opportunity to thoroughly relax. I

didn't manage to relax all that much during our time in the Alein system

after all.