We need to look into a countermeasure against the ship crab, so we have a drone flying around it to observe, and we’re sending it out of this area to check how it will react.
“Owa~. The turrets move when I get close~~~!”
“Is the AI reacting? Pull back.”
“Is it not going to suddenly fire?”
“Doesn’t look like it’s gonna…”
“<It must be in defensive mode.>”
In the end, we’re all watching. Saratha took some scrap out of the space expansion container in the cargo bay, threw it in the alchemist crafter, and we began our scouting.
The people in the cargo bay were looking at the alchemist crafter and space expansion container like they were looking at piles of money, so we had all the battle drones patrol. Iris left her main unit in the cargo bay too, ready to smack someone at any time.
“It really has a ton of legs rustling down there~.”
“It’s a crustacean… Can we eat it…”
Saratha shoves a shrimp rice cracker in my mouth. Why? Why do you have those Kappa Ebisen?
“We can’t!!”
“Munch… I dunno about that. We’re not connected to the net, so we can’t check.”
“Iris! It appears Genma is broken!”
“<I apologize, but I have no offline data about the edibility of dangerous space creatures…>”
“Darling~. I told you, you can’t eat space monsters~.”
Yeah… Maybe…
“But what about soup?”
“<Would we be able to make soup out of iron if we boiled it? That is what you sound like, master.>”
“Hnnn. Iron nails are sometimes used in broth to make cooked beans look fresher. That could work, right??”
“Probably~. No way~.”
“Have another shrimp cracker.”
“How do we solve this problem? Make curry and feed it to him perhaps?”
Sometimes the girls treat me like I’m a glutton…
“It’d be better to just mechanize his stomach…”
“Would it not be safer to replace his kidneys and guts…”
“Can you not say scary stuff like that?”
The drone moves from the stomach where there’s nothing, and towards the scrap where its body is snugly fit. We can’t see any turrets underneath with the drone either… Wait, is that a turret?
“Oh~? It looks like there are turrets if we go deeper~.”
“Did you get the size of the ship crab?”
Hn… I hear as data is displayed. The ship crab has a lot of its body outside of the ship. I can’t see the whole torso, but the claws being about fifty meters tall is making my head spin. The claws alone are bigger than Tortilla Double.
The scrap housing its body is about two hundred meters tall. That combined with the ship crab itself means we’re looking at about three hundred meters.
And as the drone flies around, we get a 3D model of the ship crab.
It’s more straightforward than I expected. A third of it is the exposed part that looks like a crawfish, and the other two thirds are what looks like a ship.
In the end of that ship part, there are two turrets up, down, left, and right. Actually, one part is empty, so it’s seven in total.
I can see defensive lasers here and there too. And there are mid sized turrets, the ones Tortilla Double should originally have as secondary guns… Everywhere!
Iris corrects me, saying there are sixty-seven of them. The deeper we go, the more there are, and there are fewer in the front part of the ship crab.
It looks like there are several big turrets in the back too. This is a lot more than I expected, and while the defensive net at the bottom has one less big turret compared to the other sides, it’s enough.
“Isn’t that a weird ship? It’s too heavily armed for a transport ship, and has too few weapons in front for a battleship. The body gets progressively thinner too, so what was it supposed to be used for?”
“Perhaps the ship crab expanded it…? Wait, is that not a shield ship?”
“Ah~. The shield part was taken off where the ship crab is, right~?”
“Now that you mention, that does appear to be the case.”
“<I attempted to look into the model, but it seems the support AI remodeled it with magic…>”
Ah, shield ship… Shield ship… Yes yes. It serves to literally shield other ships in the role of a tank. They’re mainly used by the army.
It comes forward in war, conflict, hunts, and other such big battles, so the capital ship can bombard the enemy while protected from attacks. Their use means they are few and not often used.
The smallest ones are five hundred meters, so a mercenary couldn’t use them even if they wanted it. Also, most have plate-shaped vertical shields, and even the ones with thinner hulls have a ridiculous fifty meter thick front armor.
I completely lose the plot once I realize that in total, the smallest ones are like four Tokyo domes arranged in a square. They’re big enough for four baseball matches to happen at the same time.
Leaving that aside, the ship crab must have found a mushroom type with its umbrella snapped off, and entered through the axis. If it’s a mushroom type, this arrangement makes more sense.
Mushroom-shaped shield ships typically have a hollow section in the core to store mid to small sized ships. That’s probably where the ship crab entered.
These ships are sent to war, but rarely get into firefights. They typically fire on small torpedo ships that go around the back. This one seems to have been built to focus fire on any ship that gets over the shield.
Servant classes like Tortilla Double were also used for guarding and as platforms for mobile defense, so I looked into this stuff.
“So does that mean it’s safer directly in front of the ship crab? There’s no turrets, so we shouldn’t be shot with lasers.”
“I guess… It’ll probably just swing with its claws.”
“It might use magic too~.”
“I have heard of such crabs, which fire lasers from their claws.”
What’s a crab cannery ship?
“<There have been no such reports from breeders and hunters.>”
“So will it be over if we punch that thing’s face with a torpedo?”
“I think it will block with its claws or legs…”
“It would be too simple if that was enough. But I assume the jammer is located in the back.”
“Hm, I think I’m done collecting data~. Now let’s see if it fires if we try to get away~.”
Kori then draws a corkscrew with the drone, and moves to the front of the ship crab. The turrets don’t fire, but it tries to hit the drone with its claws.
“Whoa whoa~! That was close~.”
“It’s just a drone, but can you stay in front of the ship crab as you move away? Its body is in the way of the turrets, so it must do something else. If it doesn’t, we can leave the same way without a fight.”
“Hnu, we are not fighting it?”
“Isn’t it better that way? We have torpedoes, but that thing’s huge.”
Kori operates the drone, and as I think nothing’s happening, I look at the monitor, and see a change once it’s thirty kilometers away.
Two large turrets, one above and one below, lift off and fire. The spread shot hits the scouting drone directly and vaporizes it. The flying large turrets land… And dock.
We can only gulp. Those flying turrets… Are something we know all too well.
“<They are both Servant Model N.8 Kyuryukan.>”
“So there were two large turrets up, down, left, and right, but there’s only one at the bottom… Is that where Tortilla Double came from?”
“Probably!”
“A strange warship drifted in Mishun Prime… And it fell from this.”
“Perhaps. Tortilla Double’s shield is destroyer class, but that one is corvette class. There is a ten time difference in shield capacity, so we might be able to barely make it even if both attack at the same time.”
Only those two lifted off.
“Kori, send out another drone. I want to check if only one at the top and bottom lift off, and other servant types stay still. If all seven move out, I think it’s impossible. If we have to fight, I think we’ll use the nuclear torpedo.”
“Sending drone~.”
“I wonder if the support AI is moving those.”
“<The movements are mechanical, so that would stand to reason.>”
“I do not understand the logic behind shooting targets moving away.”
Yeah, we can’t figure that out with the information we have. We’ll just have to ignore it.
In the end, we conclude they won’t take off. Aside from the two that do, one is heavily damaged, about sixty percent of it, two don’t seem to be receiving power, and the other two are buried in scrap, and while their turrets move, the ships themselves seem welded to the shield ship.
And so, what Tortilla Double has to do is simple. There are no defensive lasers at the top, so we just have to destroy those two large turrets with direct EMP hits or missiles loaded with conventional explosives.
The secondary guns that emerge in front are powerful, but with its advantages lost, it’s like a turtle that flipped over on land. Cook it however you like.
Still, there are two large laser cannons floating above its defensive net. And as I wonder what to do, I get a brilliant idea.
“If we assume Tortilla Double detached from that ship, can we dock in the opening?”
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