Bodacious Space Pirates (モーレツ宇宙海賊)

Transponders:

broadcasting devices required

to be active on all ships in order to notify

others of their presence.

The transponder's information includes

the ship's name, registry, present location, and heading:

the plans and goals of the vessel's crew.

When sailors understand each other's ships,

the silence of space becomes a golden sea.

In this era,

space is still filled with memories of the great age of exploration.

I'd like to change the flight plan a little.

It's going to be a long night...

Look at this.

Our original plan was

to have the Odette II

go around the far side of Sand of the Red Star, away from Tau Ceti.

So I thought it might be faster

if we started our turn sooner

and entered Sand of the Red Star's orbit.

It'll shave some time off the flight plan

and get us back to the relay station a little faster.

And?

It isn't only to save time.

The reason you changed our path...

Explain that, too.

Well,

the biggest reason is that

we can limit the enemy's actions.

We're almost inside Sand of the Red Star's gravity field.

The area around the planet

is within radar range.

But we haven't seen any ships that seem likely to attack us.

If there's an enemy after us,

there's only one possible reason they haven't shown themselves.

They're hiding somewhere.

And where is that somewhere?

There are currently only two areas that the Odette II's radar can't scan.

The far side of Sand of the Red Star,

and inside the sun,

where the radiation is too strong for radar to function properly.

I vote for the one that isn't the sun.

Agreed.

One vote for "far side of the planet".

One of the basic rules of air combat

is to try to stay closer to the sun.

That's a good idea.

I don't see any spaceships there likely to cause trouble.

And it's within the error margin

for our submitted flight plan.

The change to the flight plan means that

we won't be closest to Sand of the Red Star

on the morning of the fourth day.

It'll be at midnight on the third.

So the battle will begin while the teachers are asleep.

Think it'll work that way?

It's possible that they won't attack until morning.

That would buy us more distance from Sand of the Red Star.

And the extra sunlight would mean we'd gain that much speed.

And in the worst case, if nothing happens,

I'll say...

"I'm sorry!

It was all in my head."

Then that's just fine.

Okay everyone, it'll be tonight.

Has it started?

Not yet.

The most dangerous times were

right after our check-in or when we're closest to Sand of the Red Star, right?

Yeah.

Closest Point to Sand

of the Red Star

Check-in happens once every hour.

And we'll be closest to Sand of the Red Star five minutes after the next one.

So I think it'll begin once we've sent our check-in.

Sending our check-in...

I'll update our position

and say that there are no problems, okay?

Maybe we should add that

we're preparing to engage an unknown enemy warship!

No.

Do it as usual.

I'm sorry.

If everything goes well,

we'll be able to send the same message an hour from now.

Hi.

No one saw you?

I ensured that no one was in the hallways.

All that's left is for you to intercept the internal ship monitor

and no one'll have seen the pretty doctor sneaking

into the captain's room at night.

Thanks.

I'm supposed to be married, after all.

So,

everyone's on the bridge after lights out.

Is this okay?

I took some minimal precautions.

I turned off the monitors

for the infirmary, your room, and mine.

We just have to pretend we were asleep

if anyone were to call us

in case of an emergency.

Will that happen?

If they need to.

Miss Marika makes quick assessments.

She'll call us before things get bad enough that our help is needed.

Seems you have a lot of faith in her.

You saw her in the yacht flight simulator.

How quickly she makes decisions and her ability to stick to them.

So what's the situation?

They just sent

their standard check-in via FTL communication.

And we've almost reached the closest distance to Sand of the Red Star.

If Marika's right,

the enemy will soon initiate a cyber warfare attack.

Is that it?

It's here.

It really came.

The whole effective radius is flooded with noise.

Wow.

So this is real electronic jamming?

It's the same reading I saw in the textbook from that military site.

Of course, just flooding the area with jamming waves

is the simplest trick in the book.

It's nothing special.

We're all new to this,

so that works to our advantage.

Honestly,

even if they knock our eyes out now,

it doesn't really matter.

Even flying blind, there isn't anything out there to hit.

And even without radar,

we can use the direction of sunlight and gravity

and fly with just our instruments.

What do we do?

Send an FTL message

to flight control with the situation?

Not yet.

The enemy wants us to open an FTL line.

If they can hijack a zero time-lag FTL line,

we won't be able to do anything at all.

But with our cyber warfare systems,

it won't be easy for them, will it?

Well, that's true.

And there it is.

I've got hacking on our normal line.

If they're smart,

they'll hit radar and comms at the same time.

Everything by the book.

That just means they'll be easier to fight.

It makes it easy to deal with.

Then?

W-Well, for now,

we follow the plan and act like we think it's an error.

Try pretending that you're fiddling

with the radar screen settings

and adjusting the frequency.

Do it slowly,

as though only two people were on duty.

Don't work too fast.

I couldn't do it fast anyway.

Don't worry.

System check.

I've confirmed the radar is fine as far as the antenna connection.

Next, maybe I'll reset the switches.

Thanks.

How about the comm line?

They've found their way into the isolated dummy system.

As we planned, they believe it's the Odette II

and are doing their best to break it.

I'm fighting back as hard as I can,

but the default security settings are pretty easy to break.

Yeah.

It was easy this time because we took precautions,

but if we hadn't noticed, before we knew it...

If we'd lost control to the outside,

they'd be able to control not only our heading,

but our life support systems too.

If we'd set the electronic countermeasures to automatic,

would it have worked?

Probably not.

If these are the same guys you fought at the relay station,

they've seen our automatic systems once.

The same pattern won't work again.

I think they'd have prepared something to deal with it,

and we would've been taken over even faster.

Then...

How did they conduct cyber warfare in the past?

Probably the same way they do now.

In the end, it comes down to manpower.

You can have computers break through security

or match quantum codes,

but you still need someone to decide where to start

or what to use.

And if it fails, someone has to decide

what to do next.

And you have to manually repel attacks that

the automatic systems can't deal with.

The judgment of the person on duty is everything.

It's surprisingly primitive.