Star Ship Girl Era: My Shipgirls Are Too Overpowered-Chapter 45: You Always Find Trouble.... Or Trouble Finds You

The Foundry Core tried to pull away, but it could not accelerate properly while it was still trying to keep its escort frames between itself and the strike group, and the moment it lost that clean ability to reposition, Astra took it.

"Main batteries," she said, voice flat and focused. "Fire."

Four twin-mounted Sovereign 2200mm Stellar-Class electromagnetic cannons slammed the void with a force that made the surrounding wreckage contort, and the shots hit the Foundry Core in rapid sequence.

Its shield logic collapsed first, then the modular plating cracked, then internal segments ruptured, and in the span of seconds, the core’s structure turned into a violent bloom of debris and dead light.

Nearby Omnic units stopped moving a little as they tried to process what they saw.

Not all of them, not instantly, but enough that the strike group’s pressure became a shove instead of a grind, and across the wider battle map, Aurelian watched as other cores began going dark in quick succession, because once a decapitation group got traction, it did not stop politely.

The academy commander’s shipgirls were already tearing through the enemy’s Tier III line, three cores confirmed destroyed and more damaged badly enough that they were no longer controlling the swarm cleanly, and the Omnic front started losing cohesion in the way machine swarms did when their command chain got cut repeatedly.

In the open void behind them, mechs and fighters began hunting down the remaining bodies, not for glory, but to prevent any surviving node from crawling away and rebuilding somewhere else.

Aurelian could have stayed and kept shooting, because there was still work to do and there were still targets that would pay out fragments, but he did not want to spend ten days in a mop-up war while the academy calendar and his own advancement gate were both waiting, and he also knew that once the Tier III cores were dead the rest was a problem for large fleets and long sweeps, not for a single flagship that had already done its job.

He requested disengagement through the command channel, stating that Black Crown would withdraw after securing its confirmed core kill and logging the combat data.

The request was approved quickly because nobody in real command wasted assets on low-yield cleanup when those assets had higher-value tasks.

Astra brought up the post-battle report as they pulled away from the collapsing formation, her tone calm and a little lighter now that the pressure had eased.

"This time the harvest is good," she said. "Total extracted high-grade fragments are approximately two thousand four hundred in the blue tier range, and most of that came from the core’s wreck zone, which means we got lucky with how intact the internal conversion lattice stayed before it collapsed."

Aurelian nodded, because that was enough, and because the fact that it had been comfortable mattered more than the number.

"It’s a winning battle," he said, and there was a quiet satisfaction in it that he did not hide. "No desperate last stands, no scrambling to survive, just clean work with a bigger fleet doing what a bigger fleet is supposed to do."

Astra’s lips curved faintly.

"It helps when you have an aircraft carrier cutting open the wall for you," she said, and the way she said it made it clear she was already thinking the same thought he was.

Aurelian did not deny it because he was already thinking ahead, about the Destiny System list he had just opened and about the fact that an attack carrier was not a luxury in frontier war; it was a tool that decided whether you controlled the tempo or let the enemy do it.

"If conditions allow," he replied, "a carrier will be part of the fleet later, and it won’t be for show."

Two days later, Black Crown entered the stargate corridor and returned to the Polaris region without incident, leaving behind the wider fleet action and the long clean-up war that would follow, and when they finally came out on the other side the familiar starport traffic and academy-linked lanes made the whole crisis feel almost unreal, like a nightmare you woke up from while still carrying bruises.

Aurelian parked Black Crown in the assigned dock zone, ran the basic secure shutdown cycle, and then he and Astra took a shuttle down to the starport ground level, because there were things he needed to do in person, and one of them was already waiting.

The Morozova triplets stood near the arrival bay. They still looked like themselves, composed, controlled, with that familiar sharpness that made people keep a respectful distance.

They came alone, without their shipgirls at their side, because starports had rules and attention and too many eyes, and they had already learned the hard way what happened when you gave crowds something exciting to swarm around.

"Aurelian," Yelena said first, voice steady, but her eyes checked him quickly like she was counting injuries that were not there.

"You’re back early," Mirei added, trying for casual, but failing just enough that he could hear the relief anyway.

Katsura did not speak first; she just stepped closer and looked at him with that quiet intensity she saved for things that mattered, then finally said, "We got your message about the heavy destroyer lead."

Aurelian nodded, keeping his voice normal because they were in public and because he did not want to turn this into a scene.

"It worked," he said. "The family’s acquisition team should have secured the hull already, but I need to confirm it in person, and I also need to clear the next step for bonding because the advancement condition isn’t going to solve itself."

Mirei’s eyebrows lifted slightly.

"You fought twice out there, didn’t you?" she said, and it was not a question.

Aurelian did not deny it.

"Omnics," he replied simply. "It escalated, then the academy fleet arrived, then it turned into a real operation, and we got out before it became a ten-day sweep."

Yelena’s expression tightened for half a second, then relaxed when she saw he was standing fine and Astra looked the same as always, calm and lethal and intact.

"You always find trouble," Yelena said, and it sounded like an accusation until the last word softened. "Or trouble finds you."