The Final Battle is at Midnight
Summary
Marika modifies the Odette II’s flight plan so that they’ll turn around sooner and fly closer to the sun, where the extra radiation will limit the enemy’s options. The new course brings them close to Sands of the Red Star sooner, meaning the final battle will be at midnight on the third day, when Kane and Misa will be asleep, putting the fight in the club’s hands.
With ten minutes to go the girls assemble on the bridge while Kane and Misa secretly prepare to listen in from Kane’s quarters. Right on schedule the enemy ship jams their radar and successfully hacks the dummy system, unaware of the deception because the club members feigned the actions two oblivious high-schoolers on night duty would take. Thinking they’ve taken control of the Odette II, they turn on their transponder, revealing themselves to be the Lightning II, the ship that tried to hack the Odette II at the space station. They send a message demanding surrender, but the vice president uses this to hack into their systems and begin a counterattack. On the verge of success the Lightning II turns off their computers, foiling the attack but leaving them with power and optical targeting to fire their beam cannon. Things look desperate until Marika realizes they can turn the ship’s solar sails to reflect the sunlight onto the Lightning II, blinding it. Two ships arrive, the Bentenmaru and another pirate ship, the Barbalusa. Chiaki uses this opportunity to reintroduce herself – Chiaki Kurihara, daughter of Kenjo Kurihara, former captain of the Barbalusa. The Stellar Alliance military arrives as well and presumably apprehends the Lightning II.
Safely back on Sea of the Morningstar, Marika tells her mother she’s made up her mind – she’s going to become a pirate.
Thoughts
That’s more like it – ship-to-ship combat on the high seas! OK, ship-to-ship electronic warfare in the depths of space, but this was still a fun episode. It wasn’t space piracy, but if the next episode preview is anything to go by there’s plenty of that coming up, so no worries.
Regardless, it was nice to see Marika and the yacht club as a whole show just what they’re capable of. They definitely know their stuff, and if the Odette II (AKA the Original Seven ship Hakuchou) really does have some fight left in it as Kane and Misa’s shipmate suspects near the end, I’m sure it and the yacht club will be putting that to use at some point.
That being said, I’m kinda surprised the episode ended without revealing who was after Marika. Given their conventional tactics and weak security you’d assume they were some small fry who had a grudge with the Bentenmaru (but the low skill-level may just have been because they thought they didn’t need to be more sophisticated with a bunch of high-schoolers, so perhaps not). I guess they’re either so unimportant they’re not worth giving details about, or connected to something bigger the narrative doesn’t want to drop clues about yet.
Well, it was obvious Chiaki was connected to some group or other, but I didn’t expect she’d be another pirate captain. Or that we’d find out who she was with so soon, but that’s pretty awesome, so whatever. At least if anything strains hers and Marika’s friendship in the future it won’t be her allegiances. And the latter definitely has an ally she can count on now.
Point of confusion – why is the Stellar Alliance Military in the Tau Ceti System? I thought Sea of the Morningstar was its only habitable planet, and they broke away. On the same topic, is the Colony Federation the government of Sea of the Morningstar? I would assume so. Eh, this’ll probably become clearer later.
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