Hot Start

I was woken up by a ticklish feeling.

In the midst of being immersed in warmth, I felt something tickling the

tip of my nose. My half-asleep brain still refused to get away from this

comfortable warmth, and a body will remain immobile without

commands from the brain. There was something soft wrapping itself on

my entire body. There were soft things hitting the center of my chest. It

was definitely a taste of paradise.

However, it's quite unfortunate. The brain, that has already started

realizing the current situation, has now begun the process of waking up

in earnest.

When I regained consciousness, the first thing I saw was the top of a

head with a lustrous patch of light-brown hair. It seems it's the soft

locks of hair on this particular head that were tickling my nose. There

was a young woman who used my arm as a pillow and pushed her

delicate face near the base of my neck. Both I and she were

unmistakably naked. Well, in other words, it was 'that' kind of

relationship.

Now then, what should I do about this? It did feel a bit of a pity to get up

from this position, but I had to get to the bathroom to do my stuff and

take a shower. I still don't know what time it is, but it's not like I didn't

get sufficient sleep, and it didn't feel like it was too early to get out of

bed. Yeah, let's get up. I'll be as gentle in waking my partner up as

possible.

I reached for the top of the head with lustrous hair in front of me and

gave it a light pat. Shortly after, she woke up with a shudder. She looked

at me with her still-half-asleep eyes and smiled gently.

"Good morning, Mimi."

"Good morning, Hiro-sama."

* * *

Now then, let's have a little talk about our current destination – the

Sierra star system.

It was four nodes away via Hyperlane from the Alein star system – the

system we were previously at, with a great technological industry. You

can think of a Hyperlane as a kind of subspace tunnel that serves as a

sort of high-speed highway between star systems. It's said that if you

make use of it, you can travel a few tens, or even hundreds, of lightyears

in a significantly shorter period of time.

And the Sierra star system is a place famous for being a vacation

destination due to being a resort system, it seems.

So what's a resort system, you ask? In other words, it was somewhere

non-first class imperial citizens, mercenaries who aren't imperial

subjects to begin with, and other such foreign visitors go to in order to

enjoy various activities experiencing nature in tourist planets,

mountain climbing, sailing, hunting for local wildlife and eating their

meat via outdoor barbecue and the like.

By the way, having a real nature experience means that you get to see

things like a natural sunrise, naturally formed white clouds floating in a

vast, blue sky, occasional rains, sunset, a clear view of the starry sky,

and even witness shooting stars if you're lucky enough. That is the

ultimate nature experience. At least, that's what's written in the tourist

pamphlet of the Sierra star system we had on our hands.

"It somehow sounds really grand!"

"Yeah. Those aren't stuff people born and raised in colonies get to

experience often."

Mimi smiled cheerfully as she held a tablet displaying a virtual

pamphlet of the Sierra star system on it. Elma agreed with her words

and smiled back.

I woke up with Mimi earlier, entered the bathroom and took a shower

together, and went to the dining room after refreshing ourselves. We

were currently in the middle of an after-meal break after having

breakfast.

"Hm..."

All the things that Mimi found impressive were already quite familiar to

me. In other words, it was like a nature camp-out, right? I didn't really

see anything worth getting too hyped up about, honestly. But that's just

me.

But on the other hand, there's a good chance to see Mimi and Elma

wearing skimpy swimsuits under a blue sky on a white sand beach.

Now that's something worth getting excited about. I definitely wanna

get a load of that. Well, at least I'm gonna get to experience going on a

vacation in a different dimension. Let's just enjoy it to the fullest.

Oops. The talk got derailed a bit. Let's get back to talking about the

Sierra star system.

I mentioned earlier that the Sierra system is a resort system, and it

indeed had a lot of habitable planets, but it doesn't mean there are no

colonies present. They function as relay points to transfer supplies and

materials to and from the various planets, lodging places for those

tourists waiting for their turn to have the nature experience tours, and

expo sites for all the various exotic products produced and gathered

from the resort planets in the system. Many colonies with varied

functions such as these existed there.

But it seems quite a lot of people living in colonies aren't able to afford

the high costs of going in a vacation on these types of resort systems, so

they just choose the next best thing and have their vacations in the

comfort of their own homes via a simulated virtual environment. But

isn't something like that completely missing the point of a vacation in

the first place?

That's about it for the introduction of the Sierra star system as a tourist

destination. Now let's talk about the Sierra system as a viable pirate

hunting ground for mercs.

Since it's a resort system, there are naturally a lot of tourists visiting all

the time. There are many passenger cruisers operating within the area,

as well as ship escorts assigned for their protection. And there were

also many cargo transport ships carrying supplies and materials

between the various colonies and planets in the system, and even from

other neighboring star systems.

Now then, I'm sure you guys can already tell. If there's a great number

of civilian and mercantile traffic, chances are, 'those guys' would also

appear. Pirates, I mean. Since they chose to go on vacation on a resort

system, it's fairly safe to assume the tourists on the passenger ships

were all of the wealthy sorts. There were many uses for them in the

pirate's eyes. They could be kidnapped and ransomed away for a great

amount of cash, sold as slaves in the black market, or used as an outlet

of lust for those guys and certain sorts of clients.

And the cargo transport ships are a no-brainer. There were quite a lot of

merchants vessels carrying high-value goods. Even if that's not the case,

they could still be carrying things like luxury items, food, and drinks.

There's no reason for pirates not to go after them.

Of course those transport ships aren't without defenses. There were

sure to be guard ships escorting them during their travels. That's why

pirates in this system always form raid groups so they can successfully

attack the civilian ships. And in lieu of necessity, the pirate raid groups

in this system are composed of twenty to thirty ships instead of the

usual ten-something.

The jobs mercenaries can take aren't limited to pirate hunting but

escort missions as well. In any case, due to the difficulty of going at it

alone in this kind of environment, the mercenaries in the Mercenary

Guild branch of the Sierra Prime colony often form unofficial 'fleets' and

work in teams to complete missions.

"Hiro?"

"Hm? What's up?"

"No. I was just curious about why you're suddenly all quiet. What's

wrong?"

"I was just thinking about some stuff. Like what's the most effective

method for earning money in the Sierra star system."

"Oh? You're unexpectedly thinking about some serious stuff for a

change. To think you're actually concentrating on business even though

we're heading to a resort system."

"I don't know what to feel about that 'unexpected' part... Well, this is

kinda like a habit of mine."

I shrugged my shoulders and answered Elma, who was giving me a

side-eye. In fact, this may actually be a habit formed by many in my

home country. You know. There are a lot of guys over there who'd end

up working until they're almost dead if you left them alone.

"In any case, we should go to Sierra Prime first."

"Yeah. It seems we also need to place a reservation in the colony before

we can go on a vacation tour on a resort planet anyway."

"Let's head over right away once we exit hyperspace. How much longer

before we come out?"

"About one more hour."

"We have enough time to work up a sweat in the training room then."

"Someone's working hard."

"A healthy mind lives in a healthy body, as they say."

"It doesn't sound convincing when you're the one saying it."

"How cold. I'm quite the exemplary gentleman you know."

"Try to look at yourself in the mirror and say that again."

Elma gave me another disdainful side-eye. But it can't be helped, y'see.

For some reason, the games in this dimension just don't interest me at

all. In terms of ways to kill time, I could only either read some e-books,

work up a sweat in the training room, or work up a sweat with Mimi

and Elma in the bedroom. But it might really be a good time for me to

find a hobby or something in this dimension.

"Hiro-sama, I'll join you!"

"I see. Let's go then."

"...I'm coming along too."

"Really?"

For some reason, not just Mimi, but even Elma offered to come with me

to the training room. But the training room's not all that spacious

y'know. Oh well.

The three of us then proceeded to work out. I chose the menu focusing

on building up muscle. Mimi chose the one tailored to build stamina.

Elma, on the other hand, did some workouts that improve her flexibility

and explosiveness.

"Owowowow!"

"You're not very flexible, aren't you? It's important to improve flexibility

in order to take advantage of all that muscle, you know."

"Oooow!? I can't bend that much! I really can't bend that much, okay!?"

"It's fine. You can do it. C'mon. There you go. Do your best♡ Do your

best♡"

"Aaah—!?"

I tried out the flexibility exercises, but Elma was merciless. She kept

forcibly trying to bend my joints. I'll die you know.

"Is it really that hard?"

"Mimi's already pretty flexible after all."

"Yes. I'm pretty confident in my body's flexibility!"

"Ugh..."

Stop casually having a nice conversation like that and pay attention to

me too, please! I'm gonna cry here! I'm really gonna cry!

With that, we finished up each of our training routines, with Mimi and

Elma feeling quite refreshed after the workout, and me feeling quite

sore from getting my limbs and joints stretched out. Should I get this

treated at the med pod...?

"We'll be coming out of subspace soon. Countdown start. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1...

Warping out!"

Should I describe the sound as 'gyoiooon'? Or is 'gyuoooon' better?

Anyway, the ship finally got itself out of the multicolored light stream

and tunneled out to normal space along with a peculiar wailing sound.

"Downloading star system data. Checking coordinates… We've

successfully arrived at the target destination."

"Please send me the navigation data for Sierra Prime."

After a short while, Elma sent me the navigation data of the Sierra

system as well as the immediate area. Mimi's already inputted the exact

navigation coordinates earlier. It was work the two of them have quite a

couple of times already ever since we left the Termaine system. It looks

like Mimi's already getting a hang of it. Her work went smoother this

time compared to before.

"Alright. Shall we get going? Start charging the FTL Drive."

"Roger. FTL Drive, charging start. Count start. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1... Charging

complete."

"FTL Drive, activate."

The Krishna activated its FTL drive with a loud boom as usual. The

stationary stars started trailing behind the ship once more.

"We'll arrive at the Sierra Prime colony in... about an hour without

any emergencies along the way."

"Yeah. If we encountered trouble again like last time–"

Maybe Mimi saying that triggered a flag or something? An alarm started

ringing out inside the cockpit.

"...Mimi."

"Eh!? Is this my fault!?"

When I called her out, Mimi started tearing up.

"No, it's not really your fault, Mimi. It's just a coincidence, okay."

"Well someone sure is relaxed even after being hit by an interdictor..."

An interdictor is a device that can arbitrarily force the FTL Drive of a

ship to stop, bringing it out to normal space again. I'm not sure how the

thing works as usual, but it seems it has to do something with

interfering with gravity and mass or something. It was an absurd

dimension as always, but anyway, there are only two groups that

actively make use of interdictors... No, three, rather.

The first is the imperial military. Private combat ships traveling all

alone like Krishna here can be said to be suspicious in a certain sense

over here. Mercenary ships like us are usually part of an escort

contingent for merchant fleets or move with other ships in teams in this

particular system after all. Any lone ship sailing through space in these

parts can only be lone wolf mercenaries or rogue pirates. In other

words, the imperial military has the right to use an interdictor to

forcefully stop suspicious ships like that in its tracks in order to inspect

them.

The other is, of course, pirates. They'd use interdictors to stop private

passenger cruisers and the like in their tracks in order to attack them.

The last one is mercenaries like us. There are times when our targets

try to make a run for it while we're hunting them down, so we use an

interdictor to prevent them from using their FTL Drives to escape.

Krishna also has some onboard. But we rarely use them though.

"What do you think?"

"There's a good chance it's pirates."

"Yeah."

They hit us with an interdictor without so much as a warning after all.

Elma also thinks pirates are the likely cause.

"I wonder why they targeted us?"

"Maybe cause we're a lone ship. I believe they were able to detect us via

radar the moment we exited the Hyperlane."

We tried tracing the source point of the gravity interference created by

the interdictor while exchanging some light banter. The guys who used

the interdictor on us are kinda amateurish. We could actually easily

escape from them now if we had the mind to.

"Shall we get em?"

"Shall we? I heard the pirates in this system work in fairly large groups

though?"

"It's fine. Judging from the timing they used the interdictor, I'm sure

they're not that special."

"Really? Well, I guess. Let's go ahead and lay it to them then."

"Right. Mimi, battle prep. There are probably gonna be quite a number

of them, so focus on the radar, okay. And brace for Gs as well. I may

make some forceful maneuvers later."

"Understood!"

"Elma, release the chaff once we get booted out to normal space.

Release some flares too if needed."

"I know. I'll do it like always."

"Great. Let's go wild then."

I dropped the power and obediently canceled the FTL drive without

going against the interdictor. Now that we've chosen to fight, it would

be better to deactivate the drive ourselves than to wait for it to get

forcibly deactivated.

*Boom! The FTL drive finally deactivated, and the flowing stars in the

distance turned into stationary light motes again.

"We've been locked on to by unidentified ships! There are ten enemy

signatures on the radar!"

"Releasing chaff!"

"Weapon systems online! Let's go!"

The generator's power output went up to battle level within moments.

Now then, it's showtime.