The end of a story...

[Xing]

Chapter 7 - "Konoe Shidan, ikuzo!"

The corsairs who awaited a few kilometres away could see the bright golden lights of the kusari vessel engines flare approaching quickly. Like savage hunting dogs, the pirates charged in the formation with virtually no coherent coordination. But these men didn't relied as much on strategy as personnal skill, and an iron-fisted determination of one hungry thieve.

Isabelle stood up from her command chair, and nodded to her comm officer to open a comm channel to all her ships. She began speaking in a very fluid japanese, and the men were somewhat surprised for few heard her speak in their language (only the other captains, Kaito and her bridge crewmen).
Earlier, she had transmitted the same orders to Jimmy on a private channel, where they bid each other good luck. She smiled confidently, for she knew her lover would be able to manage out of this battle just fine.
They both had to survive this.
One couldn't live without the other.

"Waves of missiles at 12 o'clock!"

Isabelle didn't turned her head around - this was easily countered. But this move alone taught her much. The enemy was sending weapons against them uselessly in an attempt to deplete their ressources. A war by attrition? They did have the weaponnery and numbers to take out this entire fleet, according to her data. They just weren't yet all aseembled in one single point, but still dispersed widely around.

But once the vulture came festing on you, its like the whole race was coming down on you in a matter of minutes.

"Launch countermeasure. Center wing, right wing, fall back, left wing, advance."

The left wing of the formation began to charge forward at the enemy, the high tracking lasers of the destroyers tearing through the bulky corsair ships with ease. Seeing the majority of the kusari fleet backing off, the pirates thought theyve seen an opportunity, only to impale themselves on the left wing...

Captain Kaito turned around, obviously amased at such a strategy,
"Taisho, should we send out the fighter squads?"

"No, its useless now and too risked. Remember, our main goal is to escape, while theirs is to buy time. We'll have to sustain as much damage as we can, but dont launch the smaller crafts."

She openned up a comm,
"Jimmy, you are now leading right wing. I want you to ascend, 45 degree as fast as you can... I want you to drag away the small fly while we make a move against the gunboats ahead of us. Seems like they are the real blocading force."

And with this, she came up with new orders, changing the formation at lightning speed - and only wishing her men could follow her pace.
She was going to strike as efficiently and quickly as the wolf she was...
"left, center wing, place yourself in a conical formation and disperse fire on the pirate smaller crafts while advancing at all speed. Reduce weapon strenght to keep optimal engine speed, we are charging in. Right wing, up ahead, and once you are above the gunboats, rain hell on them."

When her ship was within range, the alarms on the Amaterasu began blaring again - the various corsair crafts were pounding the flagship in perticular, being the largest threat of the fleet, but now they were within range of a concentration of corsair gunboats... somewhat unfitting, for these large bulky ships were probably more massive than her destroyers!

Awful long minutes passed as she relayed more orders, more adjutement to replace the damaged ships backward in the formation and bring the fresh one forward. It was a tedious task, but necesary to keep the fleet in one piece. For the moment, the casualities were acceptable, with 1 destroyer lost and 2 gunboats sunk.

She couldn't lose much more or the fleet would be too severely damaged.

A predatory smile appeared on Isabelle' lips for a few seconds;
"Zan kan, eu-te!!!" [All ships, fire!!!] she ordered ferociously, as she could hear battle cry being shouted from the bridges of every of her ships coming through the comm system and relayed to her. But their targets weren't the gunboats;
instead, the fast firing turrets targeted the fighters and bombers that has been buzzing them but were constantly ignored, and tracked the unsuspecting swarm of ships following the right wing formation.

Meanwhile, she saw with satisfaction the right wing' destroyers and gunboats firing their main guns at the gunboats with deadly accuracy, effectively raining golden blades of hell on the unsuspecting ambushers who became ambushed...

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