There are no planets in Pokapoka Flower Field Prime, only the colony and moss covered asteroids with stuff like natural star shields or bubble fields.
However, this asteroid belt where plants can grow has the surface area of several Earths.
Because of this, some organic food is cheap in the Pokapoka Flower Field Colony.
For example, stuff like rabbit meat. There is a farm that specializes in it close to the colony (by close, I mean it would take about a month to travel that distance on Earth), on an asteroid with a diameter of tens of kilometers.
But it’s not just rabbits that live on that asteroid, so do people. The natural star shield holds against the vacuum, stores the atmosphere, blocks extreme cold, and protects them against all cosmic rays.
If there was a problem, it would be that the natural star shields alone won’t defend them against solid objects like meteors that come day and night.
If they’re smaller in diameter than one kilometer, the turrets deployed in the asteroid belt can generally shoot them, making them small enough to be evaporated by the heat. The natural star systems then take in the large quantities of gas as nutrients for plants.
So what about large meteors? That’s up to the army deployed in Pokapoka Flower Field Prime. They use destroyers, or corvettes and frigates with large guns.
And when that’s not enough, they hire mercenaries. It’s been two days since I came back from my first outing hunting pirates, and after talking in the Mercenary Guild for a bit, I’m now talking to everyone in the living room.
“So I talked to the guild, and we can accept meteor destroying quests about easy to destroy meteors.”
The Mercenary Guild in Pokapoka Flower Field Prime typically doesn’t have enough people. It’s like that with pirate hunts too, but when it comes to meteor destroying quests, the number of people with ships that can carry them out is limited.
“First, according to prior information, meteors travel at over ten kilometers per second. You can call it ten thousand meters per second. Even if we’re prepared to burn Tortilla Double’s engines, we can just barely hit six hundred meters per second.”
“And the armed transport ships pirates use can hit about eight hundred meters per second~.”
“That’s just the kinda ship this is. It doesn’t have enough engines for its size in the first place.”
“So how can we still take part in destroying them? They’re too fast for us to chase them.”
Says Saratha, and I change the slide in the living room’s monitor.
“Typically when a meteor is found in this star system, mechanical intelligence or artificial intelligence calculates its trajectory, so we can get that information and use the hyperdrive multiple times to lay an ambush. Then we’ll shoot it with the laser cannon, and repeat.”
Tortilla Double has more firepower than a frigate, and the guild estimates that it can deal with meteors alone up to a certain size.
“I talked to them about wanting to try out destroying meteors, and they let me do a quest to destroy a meteor in a low risk section that might hit an asteroid in a few years.”
The monitor now shows an elliptical shaped meteor composed of ice. It has a diameter of about ten kilometers. It must be about the same size as the asteroid that led the dinosaurs to extinction on Earth.
Here in the future, a single person can destroy a meteor that would completely change the environment of a planet.
“The time until impact is three years, but the time limit for the quest is three hundred days. The guild employee said that if we are going to abandon the quest, it should be done as soon as possible.”
“About how to destroy them. Typically people whittle them down to make them smaller. They said to never fire a large laser directly at them, because they will split and it will be a huge pain. Although that’s how they do it in the end.”
They’re typically cut or melted with lasers… Applying heat with weapons. It’s too effective against ice, so one shot could split a one kilometer meteor in eight.
“Hyperspace travel is typically faster, so we’re going to do multiple short jumps, put ourselves where the meteor is going, and fire multiple times to scrape it… But it will take a lot of time if it’s big, so spend today and tomorrow getting ready to live in space… Should we stock up on pillows and pajamas?”
Everyone nods, This colony puts focus on cloth products, and they’re really nice to the touch.
▽▽▽
Two days after we decided to hunt meteors, we leave the colony not too excited. Our destination is about thirty hours in hyperspace away from here.
We come out of hyperspace without any issues, and Saratha, who’s watching the radar, immediately raises her voice.
“We received data from a Pokapoka Prime monitoring satellite! Coordinates set! Time until firing, thirty seconds!”
“Everyone stand by, I’ll take the first shot.”
I can’t wrap my head around the speed of thirty kilometers per second, but on the monitor we have an anti-meteor application supplied by the Mercenary Guild. It displays a countdown and sights, so I have to match the firing position and press the button at the right time.
Once it hits zero, I press the button and keep my finger on it, so the laser fires for as long as possible. We’re close, about twenty kilometers away from the meteor, and stopped perpendicular to its trajectory.
I see something pass by through the cockpit window.
“Did you hit it~?”
“The footage is being analyzed… The meteor was hit in its edge as expected, and we succeeded in scraping it via laser evaporation.”
“Another short jump.”
I feel like I can do this a lot better than I expected. Tortilla Double spends three minutes in hyperspace, and we get to the next firing spot.
“I expected this, but perhaps this will take a long time…”
“You can leave for a while, other than Iris. Ah, but I need someone watching the radar.”
“I’ll go get something to drink and snacks. Want anything?”
“Get me some carbonated water so I don’t fall asleep, and kaki seeds please.”
“Those spicy ones~? I’ll have them too~.”
“There might be an emergency, so I don’t think it’s good to be too lax…”
“This will probably be very simple work… Miss Suzuri, are you not perfect for simple and safe work where you simply follow instructions and control the ship?”
I hear Suzuri make a noise, but maybe? I did add her as a co-pilot, so maybe it’s the perfect opportunity to try it.
▽▽▽
I leave the cockpit to Suzuri, Iris, and Saratha, and rest in the living room with Kori and Vasilisa. I was going to bury myself in pillows, but Kori is leaning on me.
“This quest will take longer than I thought~. It looked fun at first~.”
“Have you ever done meteor destroying work, Vasilisa?”
“Nope. You can’t do this without a ship.”
Leaving that aside, these kaki seeds from the mastery chef are tasty. It’s nice that it has some Japanese food. I couldn’t make this myself.
I’m about to take some, when Kori takes them into her mouth. She’s becoming no good.
“We’ll change shifts after an hour…”
I hear the noise of the glass where the carbonated water is hitting the table where it’s placed.
Gravity magic should have control over all sorts of things, so it’s rare for glasses to shake. Unless we’re doing combat maneuvers, so Suzuri must be moving the ship a lot.
Did we leave hyperspace? I hear the noise again.
“Can’t we do something about this?”
“Let’s go check out the cockpit~.”
“Are they fighting?”
We head there, and…
“Uhahaha! I did it! Serves you right!!!”
Sounds like Suzuri is having a lot of fun.
“How many did you take down?”
“Three small armed transport ships.”
She has the makings of an ace pilot.
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