Star Ship Girl Era: My Shipgirls Are Too Overpowered-Chapter 73: Pirates Retaliate 2

Astra was already ahead of him.

"Multiple jump signatures," she said calmly. "A lot of them."

That was enough to explain what had happened.

Rhoswen had hit pirate shipping hard enough to make someone bigger upset.

The ships started appearing in clusters between the rocks, some emerging too wide, some too close to debris, all of them focused on Crimson Bulwark, which was still the most visible threat in the lane.

They had not seen Black Crown yet.

That mistake was going to cost them.

Rhoswen saw the fleet first and did not sound scared.

If anything, she sounded more awake than she had all day.

"Commander," she said, and there was a dangerous brightness in her voice now. "Looks like I stirred up the whole nest."

Aurelian leaned back slightly in his chair, eyes steady on the screen.

"You did."

The pirate fleet kept arriving, more Tier III ships than the smaller crews had any right to field honestly, though "honestly" was not a word that belonged anywhere near them.

Rhoswen’s sensors painted the shapes quickly.

A battlecruiser at the front.

Cruisers and destroyers around it.

Frigates on the flanks.

Too many Tier II hulls behind them.

This was not a random patrol.

This was retaliation.

And Rhoswen, instead of backing off, looked like she had just been handed a gift.

Aurelian could almost guess what she was about to do before she did it.

"Do not fire just yet," he said into the command line, because it needed to be said before the first shot.

Rhoswen answered instantly.

"I’ll be careful."

It was the kind of answer that meant she absolutely intended to attack first.

And she did.

The moment the pirate formation started stabilizing, Crimson Bulwark opened fire hard, all while pushing forward instead of pulling back.

Her main cannons struck first, then her secondary batteries followed, and her torpedoes came out a second later in a clean, aggressive launch pattern that made it obvious she was not planning to wait and see what the other side wanted.

The pirate leader was caught off guard by how much force a single destroyer could put out.

He had seen strong ships before.

He had not seen one like this in his belt.

The front battlecruiser, his own flagship, took the worst of it at first. Rhoswen’s main gun fire landed hard enough to shake its shields loose and force damage warnings across its internal systems before it had even completed its first real firing sequence.

The lighter pirate ships suffered even worse.

The Tier II hulls on the outer line did not survive long enough to become relevant. Some had not even finished fully orienting after their jumps before Crimson Bulwark’s secondary guns tore through them.

Less than half a minute into the fight, the pirate fleet was already losing ships.

The pirate leader’s face twisted as losses began to fill his feed.

He had spent years building this force, one extortion contract, one stolen cargo, one bribed deal at a time, and now it was coming apart because one ship had decided to make an example of him.

"Fire everything," he shouted. "I want that ship broken apart right now."

He had already given up on capturing it.

Now he just wanted it dead.

Rhoswen, to her credit, did not freeze under return pressure.

She kept moving.

She stayed aggressive.

And this time, she also used her weapons properly.

Her torpedoes did not go toward the biggest target.

They went toward the more fragile Tier III frigates that had been trying to spread out on the flanks.

That was the right call.

The pirate frigates’ shields were not built to hold under that kind of hit. The torpedoes punched through, detonated, and turned six expensive ships into expanding ruin in what felt like the blink of an eye.

The pirate leader’s fortune vanished even faster.

Then his flagship shook hard enough to throw half the bridge crew off balance.

For the first time, panic got into the room.

One of his officers shouted out what had happened before the captain could even demand it.

"Another ship," he yelled. "A battle-level ship behind the asteroid line is firing on us."

Of course, there was.

Black Crown had finally revealed itself.

The pirate leader grabbed the nearest subordinate by the front of his uniform, rage and disbelief mixing together.

"You said one ship."

The answer came back thin and frightened.

"That’s what we saw."

That was the real problem.

They had only seen what Aurelian had allowed them to see.

From her hidden firing position, Astra had joined the battle properly now, and the difference in pressure was immediate.

Her first volleys did not just hurt the flagship; they gutted it.

Most of the pirate battlecruiser lit red on internal damage readouts within seconds. Hull integrity failed across whole sections.

Shields had clearly been modified beyond normal standards, which was why it had not simply vanished under the opening attack, but even those upgrades only bought it a little time.

Aurelian looked over the damage display and took a calm sip from the drink sitting near his chair, because he had already realized the fight was over.

"Sturdy shell," he said. "Not bad for a pirate refit."

Astra did not sound impressed.

"It won’t matter."

She was right.

The enemy’s ability to resist was already collapsing.

The battlecruiser had lost the fight.

The surviving Tier III pirate ships were still there, but with Crimson Bulwark mauling the forward line and Black Crown smashing the center, the rest were no longer part of a real fleet.

They were just targets who had not yet accepted that fact.

Astra’s eyes stayed fixed on the display.

"If we destroy everything, we get fragments," she said. "If we capture the remaining Tier III ships, we get much more."

Aurelian understood what she meant immediately.

A live capture of damaged pirate hulls was worth far more than reducing everything to scrap, and there were still ships on the field valuable enough to matter.

The pirate battlecruiser, two destroyers, and a cruiser.

Those were worth taking if they could be taken without wasting too much time.

Aurelian gave the order simply.

"Do it."

Astra nodded once.

Then her tone shifted back to battle control.

"Rhoswen," she said through the fleet line, calm and commanding. "Deploy your autonomous frame units with mine. We suppress, board, and seize the surviving Tier III hulls. Do not overkill what we can sell."

Rhoswen’s answer came back with immediate energy.

"Yes."

Aurelian watched the battlefield reshape itself again.

The goal was no longer annihilation.

Now it was control.

And for pirates who had thought they were the hunters of this belt, that was going to be a far worse end than dying quickly.