Star Ship Girl Era: My Shipgirls Are Too Overpowered-Chapter 97: New Round Of Clues

Elowen was quiet for half a second.

"Then the plan becomes more difficult," she admitted. "But I believe persuasion is possible. This planet is clearly part of its ecological domain, and the infected are an active corruption of that domain. Our goals align."

Aurelian nodded slowly.

"Then go."

Elowen’s expression relaxed just slightly.

"I would prefer to go personally," she said. "The Whiteheart is more likely to respond to me than to a standard combat platform."

"Approved," Aurelian replied. "Take the support you need, but don’t overcomplicate it. If this works, it saves us months."

Caelan looked between them, still trying to absorb the fact that the fate of his world might now partly depend on a conversation with a giant tree.

"You really think this can work?"

Elowen met his eyes calmly.

"Yes."

That was enough.

The decision made, Elowen left almost immediately, boarding a mech instead of waiting for a shuttle because it was faster and more flexible for the terrain she was heading toward.

Additional support units were assigned to her, and Astra shifted surveillance assets to cover the approach to the Whiteheart Basin.

Aurelian and Astercourt returned to Black Crown not long after that.

There was nothing more he could do in person for the moment except wait for the result and manage the rest of the war.

Once he was back aboard, he finally turned his attention to the gains from the orbital battle.

They were solid.

His own commander level had risen again, reaching level twenty-six. It was not explosive growth like the very early jumps, but it was still substantial.

Source fragment gains from the Kharov fleet, on the other hand, were less impressive than the scale of the battle might have suggested.

Their ships had not yielded as much high-quality material as he would have liked.

Fortunately, Solenne’s strike patterns had been efficient, and with Neris’s support calculations factored in, the battle had still turned a good profit.

The biggest gain, however, was not fragments.

It was Destiny Points.

Hundreds of thousands of Kharov had died in the orbital fight, and the tally had surged hard enough to push his reserve well past two hundred thousand.

That alone made him take a moment to call the system up privately in his mind while no one was looking his way.

He now bought the current blind box clue set almost casually, and the responses unfolded one after another.

The first clue was minor.

Gray clue: one of the surviving orbital officers from Larkspur Haven had, in fact, been picked up earlier by a neighboring civilization’s scouting detachment, and they now knew the Kharov had attacked this system.

The second clue mattered more.

White clue: Outpost Bastion-Seven on Larkspur Haven would be overrun in two days if left unaided. The installation still housed a large scientific staff and technical archives.

Aurelian marked that immediately.

The third clue was green.

Three additional Kharov Tier III fleets had already been assigned toward the neighboring beast-blood civilization that the Kharov were also pressuring. Their arrival windows stretched over the next few months.

The fourth and fifth clues were blue, and both pointed to the same future target.

Ten days from now, a Kharov archaeological fleet would pass the outer edge of the system carrying a valuable blue map and a separate blue artifact.

Aurelian’s eyes narrowed slightly.

"Interesting," he murmured.

Astercourt, hearing his voice but not seeing anything, glanced over. "Something wrong?"

"Nothing, just thinking," he said, leaving it there.

The blind box clues were all tied to Larkspur Haven and its wider surroundings now, which made sense. He had moved himself to a new region, and the system had updated accordingly.

Bastion-Seven was the immediate priority among them. A base holding scientists was too useful to lose, especially on a world he intended to keep. Those people would matter later, for industry, adaptation, translation of local systems, and rebuilding.

The third clue he stored for later thought.

The fourth and fifth interested him more than he showed. An archaeological fleet carrying both a map and an artifact was not something he intended to ignore, but it was not today’s problem.

After that, he checked the refreshed shipgirl clue pool for this region.

As expected, the local list had changed.

No purple clues this time.

Only blue.

Ten in total.

He looked through them one by one.

There were no carriers among them, which was a little disappointing but not surprising. There were several combat hulls of respectable size, though, and after filtering out the types he had no interest in, the list narrowed quickly.

He dismissed the small frigates first. Too limited, too replaceable, and not worth building around for the kind of elite fleet he wanted.

Then the torpedo-specialized destroyers went as well. Useful in the right doctrine, perhaps, but too narrow for his current needs.

The ordinary destroyers followed after that. He already had Rhoswen for that class and did not need more of the same right now.

What remained were the larger hulls.

Two cruisers.

One battlecruiser.

One battleship.

Aurelian looked at the four clues quietly and felt the outline of the next expansion settling into place in his mind.

No carrier this time, unfortunately.

But this region clearly had enough military value for the system to offer him real combat hulls, and that was good enough.

He could buy all four if he chose to.

Not today, maybe not immediately, but soon.

Before he could think further on that, Astra’s voice reached him over the bridge line.

"Commander. Elowen has arrived at the Whiteheart Basin."

Aurelian dismissed the system at once, all traces of it gone from his face before anyone could notice a thing, and turned back toward the tactical display.

The projection shifted.

Far below, a pale silver giant stood in the middle of a half-ruined green basin, surrounded by dead infected masses where its influence had already reached.

Elowen’s mech was approaching slowly.

If this worked, the entire war on the ground would change.

And if it did not, they would still have to win the hard way.

Aurelian stood with one hand behind his back and watched the feed without speaking for a moment.

Then he gave the next order.

"Dispatch a mech squad to Bastion-Seven as well. Quiet approach. Rescue priority. If anyone is still alive, I want them extracted or reinforced before that deadline hits."

"Yes, routing them right now," Astra replied.

Good.

One problem at a time.

One world at a time.

One piece added to the fleet and the future whenever the chance appeared.

Below them, the wounded planet waited, and above it his fleet held the sky.