The Auroran Silvercat (Auroridaeum argyrofelidae) is the largest predator of the Auroran lowland terrain of New Ontario and Gordias, commonly reaching lengths of two-hundred centimetres from head to tail. Like most of Auroran fauna, they are hexaped, i.e. they are in possession of six digitigrade legs, though uniquely the silvercat has a trio of tails that presumably primarily serve as a method of communication; they are able to intertwine, move independently, or “pair up” in order to communicate certain emotions (in regards to silvercat emotional spectrum and expression, c.f. Huynter 2770 or Madrigades 2688). As most predatory Auroran fauna, the silvercat’s diet is primarily –but not completely– composed of protein, and due to their large size they need large hunting grounds, encompassing numerous packs of meandering prey fauna. A grown male silvercat can weight close to three-hundred kilos, but a lot of their total weight is due to their extremely dense bone-mass, which seems like an evolutionary aberration when taking into account the lower-than-1G gravity of Aurora. In fact, no other comparable predator from Earth history comes close in regards to degradable muscle mass compared to intrinsic genetic material growth; not even the famous Great White shark, making the silvercat a truly unique predator from a pure genetic and evolutionary point of view. The feline-adjacent predator is, again, like all other native Auroran animal groups, such as the waterlossacs, the mosselks, and the redcoons, only able to comfortably consume proteins with very high levels of dextro-amino acids which thankfully have made this huge predator largely harmless to humans because of Earth-originated fauna’s protein composition. The fur of the silvercat, like the name suggests, has a grey-silvery shine to it, but it is off-set by the shimmering effect that most predators on Aurora have developed in order to more effectively stalk their prey. The silvercat is, upon first glance, a perfect predator; they have six legs with seven clawed toes on each paw, have an extreme bone-to-muscle mass density that allows them to effectively traverse near-sheer mountains and cliff ridges, and their four eyes are placed strategically along their elongated skull beneath huge ears which has been proven to hear subsonic noises. Yet all of this has apparently not been enough for this alleged apex predator, because evolution has granted them the ability to “shimmer”. This refers to the way the fur of the silvercat (and similarly quite many other predators on Aurora are able to manipulate their fur and skin in this way) more or less blends into the background, not unlike what military camouflage did back in the day before personal cloaking effect shrouds were invented. A silvercat will very effectively blend into the background, creating a hazy image comparable to a mirage produced by a human mind seriously afflicted by heatstroke. The fact that predators on Aurora, and not prey, have evolved this ability is regarded as very disconcerting by the Royal Institute of Biology.

Excerpt from the galactic encyclopaedic networked service regarding the search topic of "Auroran predator", accessed 4th of November 2874 CE.

Like all Royal Navy destroyers, the E class was designed for maximum acceleration and speed, as good a sensor suite the hull could realistically fit and power with its fusion reactor, and a main strike package of revolver-reloaded torpedo launchers to capitalize on their high speed and compensate for the lack of deck space for significant numbers of broadside railguns. Euphoria carried a combined broadside of only sixteen 12-inch railguns, each housed in their individual gunports and mounted on computer-assisted swivel mounts, but that was usually more than enough to get the job done when fending off the occasional smuggler or buccaneer, as well as other navies’ snooping corvettes and frigates. Against a modern light cruiser, the Euphoria’s broadside was next to useless given the level of armour, internal, external, and reactive, a cruiser of Royfort’s configuration would be fitted with. However, they still had their torpedoes. Unlike the magnetic and acoustic guided explosive devices of Earth’s water navies, the “torpedoes” of the 29th century were in essence long-range guided missiles, carrying its own computer-assisted guidance system that was slaved to fire director or AIC SAIs. They were usually equipped with relatively low-yield nuclear or “shredder/shrapnel” warheads; the first designed to cause as much damage as possible, the second to fray armour plates off of their targets or rip apart swarms of drones as well as any smaller warships that might stray in their path. Torpedoes were the true battlespace equaliser of naval warfare; one perfectly launched and aimed torpedo from a humble destroyer could do as much or even more damage than a battleship’s broadside. Some star nations leaned heavier on this weapon system than others, and a few like the navies of the Majapahit Protectorate and the Caliphate of Asqalan invested heavily in torpedo cruisers as a cost-effective alternative to the eye-wateringly expensive battleships that the major powers favoured. The “First Strike School” of Sir Damien Koyanagi, which had held sway at the Admiralty for the past two decades, had tried something similar but with mostly underwhelming results, such as the notoriously unreliable and poorly designed Aggressor class light cruisers.

Amelia didn’t exactly mentally vocalise that directly, it was more of a background data entry that she half-remembered, but she was very aware that if the Royfort decided to force the issue and continue on her headlong charge at the Union Indiamen, the torpedo batteries was Euphoria’s only actual chance to deter the Alliance ship.

“Master Baker,” she said out loud, the microphone of her helmet turned back on, “increase our acceleration to seventy per cent of FMP, and keep helm to a zero-ten intercept course on the Royfort. Mr Korvel, I want a firing solution for our chase batteries aimed towards the cruiser’s engine section, at least as far as is practicable. Mr McMorrow, give me a best-time estimate of the convoy’s escape vector into L-space, and a calculation of Royfort’s ability to overtake them within that time frame; I want a best and worst possible scenario, if you please.”

She turned back to Lowell.

“I believe you’re needed in AIC, Ms Lowell. My compliments, and relieve Mr Andreychuk before the poor lad breaks down from the stress. I’ll leave it up to you how to manage our drone screen, but for the time being I want a tight net of jammers, and load a tube of noisemakers just in case.”

“Aye aye, Ma’am,” Lowell said, rose from her chair and made for the bridge hatch, snapping her fingers at Ensign Gallagher and a tactical technician to follow her. When the trio were gone, Amelia turned back towards the plot, leaned forward and put her helmeted chin on her closed hands.

“We’re pushing an acceleration of almost six thousand km/s,” she said half-aloud, the crew unsure if she was speaking to herself or to them, “meaning if the Royfort continues at her current acceleration at roughly four-nine, and assuming no course correction to maintain zero-ten is effected, we’ll be at overlay in nineteen minutes and change to zero-ten. Effective range of our twelve-inches is in the range of forty k-clicks, so overlay should be a full one-eighty by two-hundred and maximum burn for at least one minute forty-eight seconds…”

She had been tapping in queries on her command chair computer while mumbling, running the maths back with the inlaid DAI just to be sure she wasn’t miscalculating. She knew Lionel Baker, the Sailing Master, was fully aware of when and how to cut their acceleration to maintain the close-in course she had ordered, but Amelia took comfort in running through the calculations herself.

“Drones away, Ma’am,” WO Korvel said, and Amelia could feel the slight reverberation of the hull as a box launcher of drones unleashed its content into the void, and the plot updated to show clusters of small electronic signals that swarmed the Euphoria’s hull. Holding their position a few hundred meters out from the titanium hull of the ship using small electromagnetic anchors, the drones immediately upon order from the Close Battlespace Awareness SAI started doing their utmost to obfuscate the electronic signals of Euphoria, creating a haze of bogus data that any potential warship sensor had to dig through. The Auroran “Starling” Mk XII drone was a seventeen metre long metal construct that could at first glance be mistaken for a small torpedo, but it had eight small wings towards the back of the hull where the engine was located, and two bulbs towards the front; one housed the on-board Dumb Artificial Intelligence computer system, while the other protected a fire-and-forget communications and sensor package. An aqueous lithium-ion battery was charged by a small miniaturised fission engine that held 0.013 grams of intensely pressurised plutonium encased in a chamber of an ultra-saline solution. That provided the Starling with ample power to do whatever required of it, and had a theoretical deployment length of eight days, but they rarely lasted more than five or six hours during intense manoeuvres. The mission packages could be switched for reconnaissance, long-range communications, targeting aids, monitoring, direct electronic warfare, torpedo countermeasures, aka “noisemaker pattern”, and a myriad of other profiles, making the unassuming pieces of metal and electronics one of the most versatile and important tools available to the Royal Navy. And compared to what military technology and hardware usually cost, the Starlings were dirt cheap, which was why they were usually loaded into box launchers twenty or thirty at a time.

“Drones in flight, Ma’am, and set to obscuration pattern, slaved to CBA SAI and running frequency-hopping and random beam walks,” the Electronic Warfare Officer –a petty officer in the under-officered Euphoria’s case– reported from her station and Amelia could see the electronic signature of the Euphoria become clouded and distorted on their own plot. Electronic warfare was fundamentally the same in the 29th century as it had been centuries before, only the computers running the algorithms to confuse the other side’s had become infinitely more complicated and electronically devious. While the main strategy for hiding targets from gravpulse by making sure the sensors read the signals as false positives because of their weak output, electronic warfare was the opposite; make so much electronic noise as to overwhelm the opposite logic centres, which if powerful enough could interfere with one’s own. That was incidentally what was happening to Euphoria’s poor CBA SAI, and the EWO had to divert other sensor systems away from close-in observation or else their primary battlespace monitor system would be overloaded by doing the simple task of keeping tabs of its own vicinity. This wasn’t a problem for bigger ships, especially cruisers, which were designed from the keel out for this type of task, but Euphoria was limited by its size in terms of what systems she could fit, and corners had to be cut somewhere. One of the corners cut in the E Class destroyer was having a truly independent sensor recipient system, which meant that all input went through the same computer matrices, including their own electronic and energy emissions. How someone hadn’t simply made the artificial intelligence logic cores filter own signals out, was a thought every operations and electronic warfare tech and officer who had ever served on an E Class had had at one point or another.

Minutes ticked by as the dots denoting the Royfort and Euphoria crept closer on the holographic plot, seemingly at a veritable crawl despite the fact that both ships were moving at thousands of kilometres per second. The trio of merchant vessels had started to move in the opposite direction, away from the system primary in order to not get caught in its gravitic sphere. Ships could exit from the Light Way well inside a system’s t-limit, but had to get within a certain range of it in order to re-enter the Light Way, the range dependent on the strength of the Lorentz force field that their Light Drives produced. And since the Indiamen had had their Misaki bottles completely shut down in order to cool them off, they would need quite a bit of time before the bottle gyros were operating at even a fraction of full power. With all of that in the back of her head, Amelia kept her eyes fixed on the Royfort’s signal, listening absently but noting the reports her bridge officers sang out.

“Ma’am,” a gruff male voice reported over the internal net, “Royal Marine Number One section is now in place to protect the bridge, and Number Two section is position to protect the bulkheads heading to Fusion One. Number Three and Four sections are standing by to assist Damage Control or Medical if needed.”

She thumbed the internal comms response button on the right underside of her helmet.

“Understood, Lieutenant Glendower, thank you,” she replied to the Royal Marine lieutenant in charge of the platoon on board, though Amelia knew there hadn’t ever been a boarding action of a Royal Auroran Navy ship in its centuries-long history. Regardless, the Royal Marines still adhered to a very strict security procedure of protecting the most important parts of the ship. In reality, the bootnecks were handier as assistant medical or DC personnel, or helping the gunnery crews, but they still had their traditional role to fulfil as the protectors of a warship, which they jealously guarded.

“Royfort is hailing us, Ma’am,” Ensign Durzi said, hand awkwardly hitting his helmet as he absentmindedly tried to wipe his brow, “shall I put it on screen, or to your chair?”

“Screen please, Mr Durzi, let’s see if this Commander Vargas is willing to actually see sense and calm the hell down.”

Part of the mimicglass screen blinked alive, showing the seemingly perpetually angry face of Commander Vargas, and while he still wore the black and white cap, his neck was now covered by the collar of a white Alliance Navy C-suit equivalent.

“Euphoria, this is Royfort. Please comply with previously transmitted orders, and cease this meaningless posturing you are currently attempting. You and your fellow Union ships are in violation of numerous interstellar treaties, and as such are bound by law to observe the directions I have given you multiple times already. If you do not, I will be forced to take drastic measures to see that Alliance sovereignty is not violated.”

Not even waiting for Vargas to complete his spiel, Amelia literally punched her chair’s comms override button, the distance between the two warships sufficiently low that communications was practically instant, the transmission speed of the radio signals aided by the Alliance buoys.

“Royfort, as I have previously iterated, Nürmann-184 and the Lorelei SAR is not sovereign Alliance territory; its security is administered by the Alliance Armed Forces, but that is the extent of your reach in this stellar region. Given the current relations between our respective star nations, what Royfort is attempting to do is directly comparable to piracy, since no formal declaration of war or a special cessation of normal activities and contact exists. In fact, if you are resolved to carry out your previously stated commands, your actions may be regarded as a direct act of war against the Kingdom of Aurora and Her allies in the Royal Union. I would respectfully ask that you take this into consideration, and allow LP-77 transit to Lucidia, whereupon members of the diplomatic service of our two countries can have a chance to–”

“Royfort’s cut the feed, Captain,” Durzi reported in a blank tone and Amelia’s jaw almost dropped.

“Someone please tell me,” she half-shouted, teeth grinding as she seethed with anger, “if having actual brain damage is a prerequisite for signing up for the Alliance Navy? That bloody twat over there is actually going to force the issue over entry into this arse-end of nowhere system, come hell or high water.”

She fell silent and fingers drummed rapidly on her armrest, while the rest of the bridge crew stole nervous glances at each other and at the plot, where the symbols of the two warships gradually closed in on each other.

“Mr Korvel,” she said as the range dipped below thirty-two million kilometres, “I want a torpedo firing solution for the Royfort, three tubes, nuclear-tipped warheads, and a targeting/pen-aid drone to accompany and lead the launch.”

The air felt sucked out of the bridge, and Sub-lieutenant Antonio McMorrow crossed himself, muttering a silent prayer.

“Ma’am,” the disembodied voice of Lieutenant Lowell came over the bridge speakers, “for the benefit of the logs, I must point out that the radiological alert of armed nuclear warheads might be interpreted as intent of opening fire on the warship of a foreign nation, and could be construed as a casus belli.”

“And I will counter,” the captain replied, “that the numerous messages from the Royfort has clearly demonstrated their intent to commit what is in essence a casus foederis, on top of already blatant breaches of ius inter gentes.”

“I love when you speak dirty to me, Captain,” Lowell replied, trying her best to alleviate the palpable tension on both the bridge and in the Action Information Centre deep in the ship’s core, but Amelia was not in the mood for quips, something her shaking hands could attest to, had she not been trying her best to hide it by keeping them balled into fists.

“Stand to your post, Ms Lowell, and keep me appraised of any changes in the Royfort’s combat profile. You have the CBA logic core with you, and all combat and sensor information flows through you first. Bridge out.”

She turned halfway around in her chair to look the direction of the tactical stations.

“Now, Mr Korvel, order Ensign Dunleavy to load the aforementioned torpedoes and drone, and await my order to launch. And rest assured, I’m not moronic enough to fire the first shot, but I want our options ready should the proverbial shit hit the proverbial fan. But I do want every gunner to be ready at their station for anything.”

“Aye aye, Milady,” Warrant Officer Stephen Korvel answered and started to run the calculations for a firing solution on his inlaid console, helped by his two tactical specialists (Lowell had grabbed his Gunnery Officer’s Mate to assist her in the AIC).

A different set of klaxons, more high-pitched and rapidly pulsing than the Action Stations one from before, started singing, and Fraser-Perry leaned over his console in concern.

“Milady, the Royfort is hitting us with targeting lasers, but she still has about half of her rangefinders and guidance systems focused on the Indiamen.”

“Well, she had to switch targets eventually; anything else would be absolutely idiotic. How far away from transit are the merchant ships? And someone shut off that damn alarm, it’s threatening to give me a migraine.”

“Ma’am, the Antiochene Heldin is the lead of the trio,” McMorrow reported, “and she’s approximately thirty-four minutes from generating enough Lorentz force to enter the Light Way. The Selenagrad Prize might do it in twenty-nine minutes, but if they don’t transit as a squadron they’ll lose each other within a few minutes once inside the Way.”

“Bloody brilliant,” Petty Officer Kendra Blackwell, the Electronic Warfare Officer (who had so far mostly kept her mouth shut outside of delivering mission-specific reports, focusing on her tasks) commented, “we have to dance around these megalomaniacal idiots for half an hour and hope to the Gods they don’t open fire?”

Something clicked inside Amelia’s brain and she stood up from her command chair, startling Fraser-Perry (stationed by the holographic plot and ergo the closest to the command dais), and she slapped her hands together, though the C-suit made the clapping sound well muted.

“That’s bloody it, EWO,” Lady de la Lune burst out, the embers of something akin to an idea to get out of their current predicament taking shape in her mind, “let’s play up and ask them to dance.”

“Milady?” Fraser-Perry and Durzi both said simultaneously in equally confused tones, but Amelia simply waved them away.

“Master Baker, change our intercept to oh-,” she had to sit down into her chair again to crunch a few numbers on her command chair computer, but grinned when her rough estimates came back mostly positive, “correction course change, oh-eight-one by oh-oh-niner.”

“Uh, aye, Milady,” the Sailing Master replied, starting to adjust the multi-thousand tonne ship’s course and the pitch, yaw, and force of the five ion engines from his large computer console, “changing course to oh-eight-one by oh-oh-niner. Beg Milady’s pardon, but acceleration as before?”

“No, actually, increase thrust to full FMP, I want all the Euphie can give us. Mr Korvel, I trust those torpedoes are ready?”

“Yes, Ma’am,” WO Korvel replied, having double-checked his armaments readiness display, “Dunleavy reports flank tubes one through four are loaded, and standing by for further instructions.”

“Good man,” Amelia said enthusiastically, and sat further back in her chair. Silence dragged out for a few more moments, allowing the plot to correct for the Euphoria’s new course compared to the Alliance light cruiser.

Fraser-Perry was the first to break the bridge’s sudden reticence by clearing his throat.

“Beg your pardon, Ma’am, but what do you mean by ‘ask them to dance’?”

An enigmatic smile crept across Amelia’s pretty face and she nodded towards the plot.

“Take a look for yourself, Aiden, and tell me how that’s not the most apt description you can come up with.”

It took a few more moments for the bridge officers and technicians to consider the course change, how it affected the overall battlespace situation, but none was the wiser before the enthusiastic voice of Ensign Anna Gallagher emerged over the bridge’s speakers.

“You’re going to use the mass of the Royfort as an electromagnetic sling, Milady?”

Every set of eyes on the bridge turned towards the lieutenant commander, who grinned and crossed her arms across her chest in response.

“Surely the Royfort has too small of a mass for such a manoeuvre, Ma’am,” McMorrow protested, and Amelia cocked her head slightly.

“I don’t know, Sub-lieutenant, does she? Because according to my calculations, if we launch every single of our drones and activate their electromagnetic anchors in a chain, we should theoretically, whilst also firing off our emergency counter-thrusters, be able to use the Royfort as an emergency gravitic anchor; very much against their will I might add, which only adds another element of jeu ne sais quis in my book.”

She rose from her chair, her grin now wiped from her face, and using sharp finger movements, transferred her calculated plot projections from the command chair to the central holographic plot, which displayed the suggested trajectory and its result, and more than a few of the bridge crews’ eyebrows rose in surprise.

“Ma’am,” Lowell’s voice reappeared over the speakers, “this suggestion is wholly dependent on the Greens actually sticking to their current course, and not deviating from it in any considerably fashion in order to chase us down.”

“Ms Lowell,” Amelia replied, “not to sound too disparaging or sell ourselves short here, but for an Alliance cruiser captain hell-bent on violating the Azurea Agreement, three large interred Indiamen class ships are much more visually appealing prize than a single destroyer, despite the bloody nose in regards to prestige it might give the Royal Navy. Run back the train of logic this Commander Vargas has stuck to during this entire encounter. He have claimed that none of the ships of LP-77 are what they claim to be, the unsaid accusation being that this is a convoy composed of purely warships. What possible base do his arguments have? Apart from the electronic signals and the transponders we are all transmitting, which for the record are all correct and were last updated in Kitezh three weeks ago, the Royfort must be relying on sensor data to support their claim. And even basic LIDAR and thermal will confirm that we, the Euphoria, have a mass that translates to roughly two-eighty k-tonnes when converted to normal G. On the flip side, the Indiamen are north of eight million tonnes in 1G, the same as a battleship or a large battlecruiser. Surely, if Commander Vargas over there has even the slightest inclination to cover his own arse whilst also dealing the Royal Union a humiliating blow, or even just make our lives that much harder, he could realistically blame faulty electronics and sensor systems for the Royfort’s inability to recognize the merchant ships as civilians. It wouldn’t be hard for him and his crew to claim they showed up as ships of the line on their screens, while we were clearly a destroyer class all the while.”

Confused silence stretched on for a few moments before Lieutenant Aiden Fraser-Perry actually laughed out loud.

“My God, Milady, I sure hope we in the wardroom never have to play poker against you anytime soon.”

“Aye,” WO Korvel commented with a lopsided smile on his weathered face, “that does sound slightly farfetched or like wishful thinking, but Milady’s logic does seem to hold water.”

“Are we just going to accept that hypothesis as fact?” Ensign Joseph Durzi argued, his voice betraying that he might be just a bit more panicked than the rest of the bridge crew. Not that Amelia blamed him, he was a fresh twenty-two year old on his first proper deployment.

“After all, what if we’re wrong, and we get blown to bits whilst trying this slingshot around the Royfort, a foreign man-of-war, I might add, for the benefit of the logs.”

“Unless hostile intent is recognised,” Lieutenant Lowell supplied over the comms, “there is nothing illegal in straying into the close-in sphere of control of a warship, provided that we inform the opposite warship of this beforehand.”

“Ah, speaking of which,” Amelia hurriedly snapped her fingers at Korvel, “tell Ensign Dunleavy to disarm those nukes right the fuck now, or the radiological alert on the Royfort will go off when we try this little ‘Ring-Around-the-Rosie’. But keep the railgun batteries manned, I still want to be able to respond if Vargas proves to be even more of an idiot than he has already demonstrated.”

“Aye aye, Ma’am,” WO Korvel reported before, with some relief, ordered the gun captain of the torpedo batteries to stand his missiles down and disarm them. “Ordering Ensign Dunleavy to disarm nukes and prepare every drone in his arsenal and make sure their anchors work. Any particular package you want him to fit them with?”

“Considering the fact that there’s some hundred-and-sixty drones in question, absolutely not,” Amelia said with a bit of a grimace, “I’ll just be happy if he and his boys and girls can get them launched before Master Baker is forced to make his turnover. Speaking on which, when will that be, Lionel?”

“In just about eleven minutes and some change, Milady,” the Sailing Master replied as he corrected (for the ninth time since the captain had ordered this abrupt course change) the handling of the Euphoria.

Amelia swallowed hard.

“Well, Mr Korvel, impress upon Mr Dunleavy that he has only ten minutes to launch every single drone we have and stack them all, sans those already in flight, on our port side. Have him layer them as best he can whilst still retaining a coherent electromagnetic field of adhesion.”

“Pardon me, Milady,” McMorrow piped up, “but how is this going to force Royfort to give up the pursuit of the Indiamen? As far as I’m able to make out, we’ll sling around her and that’ll be the end of it; we’ll be hopelessly out of position to pursue her further because we will have lost the acceleration and momentum to match her speed, which they will use to close even further on the merchant ships.”

“Ah, Antonio,” Amelia smiled whilst tapping the top of her C-suit helmet in a knowing gesture; “spoken like a true astrogation officer, but you’ve missed the obvious tactical consideration of such a move on our part.”

“We’ll be crossing their rear tee, Sir,” PO Blackwell filled in and the corners of her mouth crept up as well. “Euphoria will be able to rake the basically unprotected rear –the engine and engineering section of any starship– with our full broadside if we should choose so. Which means the Royfort will have to follow our turn, lose the exact momentum you’re so worried about, Sir, all the while Euphoria can follow the slingshot through and regain our acceleration still using the Royfort as an anchor.”

“Quite right, EWO,” Amelia positively beamed as the rest of the bridge crew was catching on to her idea, “the cards will firmly be stacked in our favour, to follow up on Mr Fraser-Perry’s allegory of poker. Now, Mr Durzi, if you’d be so kind to inform the Royfort that we will be performing a course correction that will lead to us ending up within her zone of control, but no hostile intent is intended? Surely she’ll demand us to reverse, but the lady doth protest too much, methinks. Don’t bother me with Vargas’ replies unless he becomes unacceptably nasty.”

“Aye aye, Ma’am,” Ensign Durzi said with considerably more enthusiasm than he had displayed a few minutes ago.

“Not the most apt quote, Ma’am,” Lowell opined from AIC, and Amelia made a dismissive hand motion that she realised only after the fact would go unrecognised.

“I’m not exactly a wellspring of good quotes to begin with, First Lieutenant,” she said with humour colouring her voice, a sort of giddiness born from desperation. Her hands were still shaking whenever she unclenched them. Fumbling twice, she finally found the transit-all button on the armrest that linked to her helmet.

“Attention all hands, Euphoria will in about ten minutes affect a slingshot move around the Alliance warship Royfort, aided by the electromagnetic anchors of every single remaining drone we have on board. Royfort’s captain has been informed of our non-hostile intentions, but I want every man and woman to stand to their posts in case their comportment is inclined towards belligerence.”

Amelia cleared her throat, realising her aristocratic way of speech and mentality had naturally surfaced due to the stress she faced, and she took a deep breath.

“That is to say, I want all gunners to stand to their posts, and all other hands remain ready for anything. The Greens might be liable to try any sort of underhanded tricks, which they’ve already proven to be capable of given the current situation we are in. I expect every man and woman to act honourably in carrying out their duty to His Majesty and the Kingdom of Aurora.”