The World of Otome Game
is a Second Chance for Broken Swords
Story Starts
-=&
Chapter 11.2 -
The Offrey
Gambit
The cabin aboard the patrol craft sat in silence for three heartbeats after the transmission ended. Leon leaned back in his chair, arms crossed, eyes fixed on the bulkhead where Luxion had projected the audio waveform—now a flat line, fading to nothing.
"So was that recorded?"
Luxion drifted beside Leon's head, his red optical sensor pulsing once. "Every syllable, Master. Audio, metadata, transmission frequency, and the unique crystalline signature of Lady Wayne's communication stone. I have also logged the precise coordinates she transmitted to Captain Draake, along with the encryption method employed—which, I should note, was laughably primitive."
Leon exhaled through his nose. Not a sigh. Not quite. More the sound of a man confirming that the trap he'd walked into was, in fact, exactly the trap he'd expected.
Across the cabin, Olivia sat cross-legged on the deck with a half-eaten apple in one hand and a dagger in the other, idly carving the fruit into something that might have been a flower. Sella stood behind her, arms folded, whilst Leysritt occupied the bench to Olivia's left with her usual blank serenity. Erica stood near the door, hood drawn forward despite the warmth of the enclosed space, her arms folded inside her cloak. Pollux leaned against the bulkhead beside her, thick arms crossed, watching the room with the patient attention of someone accustomed to waiting for things to turn violent. Durga had settled against the far wall, her silver-white hair pooling over one shoulder, red eyes half-lidded but very much awake. Art perched on the edge of the navigation console, legs swinging, and Ria had claimed the armrest of Leon's chair like a cat that had decided the highest point in the room belonged to her.
None of them looked surprised.
"So do you have an idea on what the size of the fleet we're engaging is?"
"Based on atmospheric probes deployed from the troposphere over the past eighteen hours—"
"Just the number, Luxion."
"One thousand vessels."
Leon's jaw tightened. Not from fear. From the sheer logistical absurdity of it.
"One thousand."
"Approximately. The composition includes a significant concentration of cruiser-class and frigate-class vessels, along with several dozen corvettes and gunboats serving as screening elements. The flagship is a dreadnought—older model, pre-war construction based on hull geometry, likely salvaged from one of the decommissioned frontier fleets." Luxion's optical sensor rotated, projecting a three-dimensional wireframe of the enemy formation above the cabin's central table. Blue dots swarmed in a rough crescent, with the dreadnought's blocky silhouette anchoring the centre. "Captain Draake appears to have consolidated multiple pirate factions under the Blackfleet banner for this operation. I suspect your performance during the Folkvangr skirmish motivated the Offreys to invest in additional firepower."
"Flattered."
"You should be. The mercenary contracts alone would bankrupt a lesser earldom. Whoever is funding this committed substantial capital."
Leon studied the wireframe, tracing the disposition of the fleet with his eyes. Cruisers clustered around the dreadnought in a defensive screen. Frigates ranged further out in hunter-killer packs. The corvettes formed a loose net—a containment formation designed to prevent a single vessel from breaking through and running. Standard anti-commerce raiding doctrine, scaled up to an absurd degree.
"Their dreadnought. How does it compare?"
"To the Partner? Generously, it is roughly one-third the displacement. Its armament is conventional—broadside batteries, a forward lance, point-defence clusters. Respectable for a pirate flagship. Against the Partner's weapons systems, shields, and structural integrity, it would not survive sustained engagement." A pause. "Against the Partner's secondary weapons systems, it would not survive sustained engagement."
Olivia bit into her apple. "So it's a big fish in a small pond pretending to be a whale."
"An adequate metaphor, Lady Olivia."
Leon drummed his fingers against his forearm. A thousand ships. The number itself wasn't the problem—not really. He'd seen what Luxion's weapons platforms could do to massed formations during their border rotations. A thousand conventional vessels against the Partner was less a battle and more a physics demonstration. But that assumed the Partner was the centrepiece. That assumed he wanted to show every card in his hand to an audience that included the Crown, the Offreys, and whatever intelligence assets the Principality or the Rachelle Kingdom had embedded in the region.
"It's a good thing they're only planning to capture the vessel," Leon said. "If they'd come to destroy it, they might have brought something that would actually require me to pay attention."
"Shall I destroy them?" Luxion asked. The question carried no particular inflection. He might have been asking whether Leon preferred tea or coffee.
"No."
"Master—"
"No, Luxion. I want the Partner kept as a surprise in the hole." Leon unfolded his arms and leaned forward, elbows on knees. "Think about what we've shown so far. The border rotations—patrol actions, point defence, standard suppression fire. Nobody outside this cabin has seen the Partner go all out. Nobody knows what it can actually do. That's an advantage I'm not spending on a pirate fleet, no matter how many hulls they've scraped together."
"A strategically sound position," Luxion conceded. "Though I note that my patience for threats to my structural integrity is finite."
"Your hull can take it."
"My hull can take a great deal, Master. That does not mean I enjoy the experience."
Ria snorted from the armrest. Art covered her mouth, shoulders shaking.
Leon ignored them both and returned his attention to the wireframe. "What I'm more interested in is why they think this will work at all. They watched the broadcast. They saw what happened at Folkvangr. Even if you strip away the Partner entirely—even if you assume Carla's intelligence is accurate and the ship is 'severely understaffed'—they're still sending a thousand conventional vessels against me, Livia, and every guardian spirit we brought. Plus Brad and Chris and their contracted spirits."
He ticked the names off on his fingers.
"Durga. Art. Ria. Sella. Leysritt. Pollux—well you're with Erica. And the former crown prince's retinue brought their own—Patroclus for Chris, Bedivere for Brad." Leon shook his head. "That's a significant concentration of contracted guardian spirits aboard a single vessel. Any intelligence assessment worth the paper it's printed on would flag that as a problem."
"You're assuming the Offreys conducted a competent intelligence assessment," Olivia said.
"I'm assuming the people they hired did."
"Fair point."
"Carla said the Partner was understaffed. She's right, from a conventional standpoint—there's no crew. No marines. No gun teams. What she doesn't know is that there doesn't need to be, because the entire ship is run by Luxion." Leon gestured at the floating AI. "They're operating on incomplete information and filling the gaps with assumptions. Dangerous assumptions. They assume the ship needs crew to function. They assume my guardian spirits will be occupied by their own bonded combatants. They assume numbers and concentrated firepower will do the rest."
"Assumptions kill," Durga said from her wall. Her voice was quiet, almost musical. Her red eyes had opened fully.
"They do."
Luxion's optical sensor flickered—not the steady pulse of normal operation, but a rapid, irregular strobe that Leon had learned to associate with the AI processing something he didn't like. When Luxion spoke again, the measured neutrality had evaporated. What replaced it was something harder. Colder.
"Master."
Leon straightened.
"I deployed additional surveillance assets after intercepting Lady Wayne's transmission. Invisible drones, operating at extreme altitude—passive observation only, as you instructed for all Offrey-adjacent intelligence gathering."
"And?"
"The Offrey operation has layers we did not anticipate." Luxion's voice had dropped half an octave. The projection above the table shifted, the pirate fleet's wireframe shrinking to one corner as new data populated the display. A second formation appeared—smaller, tighter, hidden behind a cluster of barren floating rocks roughly forty kilometres west-southwest of the projected engagement zone. "There is a vessel here. Not pirate-flagged. No transponder. Hull composition is inconsistent with any registered merchant or military vessel in the kingdom's records."
The cabin had gone very still.
"What kind of vessel?" Leon asked.
"A modified bulk transport. Reinforced internal compartments. Shielded cargo bays. And—" Luxion's strobe intensified. "—it is carrying demonic armours."
Nobody moved.
Erica's hand found the edge of her hood. She didn't pull it forward. She pulled it back—slowly, deliberately—until the silver-white hair and the blue eyes beneath were fully visible. Her expression hadn't changed, but her knuckles had gone white.
"How many?" Leon asked.
"Sixty-seven confirmed units in various stages of dormancy within the cargo hold. The vessel's crew complement is minimal—twelve individuals, none of whom register as Holfort citizens. Their communications are encrypted using Rachelle Principality military-grade cipher protocols."
Leon's hands had gone flat on his thighs. Very deliberately flat.
"The Offreys have dealings with Rachelle."
"Based on intercepted fragmentary communications between the transport vessel and an encrypted relay node that traces back to a location within Offrey territory—yes. The connection is not direct. There are intermediaries. But the chain is there." Luxion paused, and when he resumed, the anger in his synthetic voice was unmistakable. "Master, I must also inform you of the following. Based on communications intercepts from the transport vessel's crew, the Rachelle contingent is not aligned with the pirates' objective. Captain Draake believes his mission is to capture the Partner intact and ransom its owner. The Rachelle group have no intention of allowing that to succeed."
"They're going to destroy the ship," Leon said.
It wasn't a question.
"Correct. The demonic armours are the kill mechanism. Once the pirate fleet engages and draws your attention, the transport will approach under cover of the battle. The armours will be deployed directly against the Partner's hull. Their objective is not capture. It is total destruction—you, the Partner, and every soul aboard."
Luxion's optical sensor burned a steady, furious red.
"The operation has three layers, Master. The first layer is the Offreys' plan as Carla Wayne understands it: pirates capture the Partner, the Offreys broker your ransom and emerge as indispensable allies to the Crown. The second layer is what the Offreys actually commissioned from Rachelle: military-grade assets to ensure the operation succeeds, deployed without Draake's knowledge. The third layer is Rachelle's own objective—and this is where the Offreys have miscalculated catastrophically."
Luxion's projection shifted again. Lines of connection appeared between nodes—Offrey territory, the transport, the relay stations, the pirate fleet—a web of transactions rendered in cold light.
"Rachelle has no interest in helping the Offreys acquire the Partner or ransom a viscount. They want the Partner destroyed and you killed. A Holfort border lord eliminated, the kingdom's most advanced warship removed from the frontier, and the Rachelle border weakened in a single stroke. And once the debris cools, Rachelle will hold evidence of every communication, every payment, every contract that links the Offrey family to this operation. The Offreys will have facilitated an act of war against their own kingdom—using foreign military assets against a Crown-appointed border lord. Treason, by any definition the courts would recognise."
"And Rachelle will own them," Leon said.
"Completely. The Offreys will face a choice: submit to Rachelle as an intelligence asset embedded within the Holfort aristocracy, or have the evidence delivered to the Crown and face execution. A marquise house, turned into a Rachelle puppet. Their trade networks, their vassal houses, their political connections—all repurposed to serve Rachelle's interests from within Holfort's own nobility."
"Sixty-seven." Erica's voice cut through the silence. Quiet. Controlled. But Leon had worked alongside her long enough to hear the fracture running beneath the surface. "At Fraser, the worst incursion we faced was eleven. Eleven, and we lost two patrols and a watchtower before the Frasers' household spirits turned them back." She looked at Leon. "Sixty-seven would have overrun the entire border."
"Yes."
"And the Offreys brought them here. Onto Holfort soil. Through the same border we—" She stopped. Drew a breath. When she resumed, the fracture had been sealed. "That is treason."
"It is."
Silence held the cabin like a closed fist.
Then Luxion spoke again, and any pretence of artificial composure shattered.
"Over my dead body."
The words came out clipped, precise, and vibrating with a fury that made the cabin lights flicker.
"Over my dead body will a fleet of second-rate pirate vessels and a cargo hold of degenerate war relics breach my hull. I was not built to be destroyed by the military surplus of a failed successor state. I was not designed to be brought low by barbarians who strap cursed metal to their bodies and call it warfare. My weapons systems alone could—the sheer computational indignity—a bulk transport—they are planning to assault me with cargo that wouldn't pass inspection at a frontier scrapyard—"
Leon glanced at Olivia. Olivia glanced at Durga. Durga looked at Art. Art looked at Ria. Ria looked at Sella. Sella looked at Leysritt. Leysritt looked at Erica. Erica looked at Pollux.
Pollux shrugged.
They all shrugged.
"—and the encryption. The encryption they used. I could crack it with my tertiary processing cluster. My tertiary cluster. The one I normally reserve for climate modelling and agricultural yield projections. These people are attempting to destroy the most advanced—"
"Luxion."
"—vessel in this hemisphere with technology that wouldn't qualify as a museum exhibit on—"
"Luxion."
The AI stopped mid-sentence. His optical sensor continued to burn red.
Leon turned to Erica.
"You're not staying for the engagement."
Erica's chin came up. The reflex was immediate—shoulders squaring, spine straightening, the posture of a princess who had spent her life being told where she could and couldn't go. "I am your steward. My place is—"
"Your place is wherever you're most useful." Leon's voice was steady. Not unkind, but it left no space for negotiation. "And right now, the most useful thing you can do isn't fight pirates. It's end a marquise house."
The words landed. Erica's mouth closed.
"Luxion. Compile everything. Audio recordings. Fleet dispositions. The transport's coordinates. Demonic armour count. Rachelle cipher protocols. The full communication chain linking the transport to Offrey territory—every intermediary, every relay node, every transaction. Package it for independent verification. I want the probe telemetry raw, the analysis separate, and the evidence chain documented so that anyone with a functioning brain and a legal education can follow it from the Offrey estate to that cargo hold."
"Yes, Master. Compiling now."
"Erica." Leon met her eyes. "When we reach the anchorage, you take the fastest vessel we have and you go to your parents. Not a report through channels. Not a message. You, in person, with the evidence in your hands. You walk into your father's study and you lay it out."
Erica was quiet for a long moment. Her hand had drifted back towards her hood—caught itself—returned to her side. When she spoke, it was with the measured control of someone who had weighed every word before releasing it.
"My father will want verification."
"He'll have it. Full telemetry, independently verifiable. Luxion's surveillance drones are still operational—he can confirm everything in real time if the Crown requests it."
"My mother will want to act immediately."
"I'm counting on it."
Something shifted behind Erica's blue eyes. Understanding. Not just of the military situation—she'd grasped that the moment Luxion said demonic armours. This was the other understanding. The political one. The one that recognised what Leon was building with this evidence and why he needed it in royal hands before the first shot was fired.
"You intend to do more than destroy the fleet," Erica said.
Leon didn't answer. He didn't need to.
"I'll need Pollux with me," Erica said.
"Naturally."
Pollux pushed off the bulkhead and cracked her knuckles. No objection. No questions. Just readiness.
"And I want counter-measures included in the briefing package," Erica added, her voice settling into the clipped efficiency of a steward who had accepted her assignment and was already planning three steps ahead. "Not for the fleet—for the armours specifically. If my father sees Sixty-seven demonic units and no actionable response framework, he'll mobilise half the border garrison before reading the rest. I need him reading, not reacting."
"Luxion, include the counter-measures."
"Already incorporated, Master."
"Good." Leon looked around the cabin. Olivia with her apple and her dagger. Sella and Leysritt flanking her. Durga with her calm red gaze. Art with her hand on her blade. Ria vibrating on the armrest. Erica, composed now, the fracture sealed and the mission accepted. "We're not just destroying a pirate fleet any more. We're documenting a treason case and delivering it to the Crown through a member of the royal family, whilst simultaneously eliminating every military asset the conspirators deployed."
"And then?" Olivia asked. Her tone was light. Her eyes were not.
"And then we'll see what the evidence demands."
Olivia picked up her apple and took a bite. She didn't push further. She didn't need to.
"Luxion. How long until we reach the forward anchorage?"
"At current speed, four hours and seventeen minutes."
"Cut it to three. Increase to maximum sustainable cruise. I want continuous surveillance on that transport—if it moves, if it powers up, if someone aboard sneezes in an unusual pattern, I want to know."
"My drones are maintaining constant observation. The transport has not altered its position or power output since initial detection."
"Good. Keep it that way."
Leon's hand found the door handle. He paused, half-turned back towards the room. "One more thing."
Olivia looked up.
"Carla Fou Wayne is aboard this patrol craft."
"She is," Luxion confirmed. "Currently in the guest cabin, starboard side, third deck. Vital signs indicate elevated heart rate and cortisol levels consistent with sustained anxiety."
"She should be anxious." Leon opened the door, then stopped in the frame. The corridor beyond was dim, lit by the soft amber glow of Luxion's internal systems. "She fed them our coordinates thinking they'd take the ship and ransom me back. She didn't sign up for demonic armours and a kill order."
"You believe she's unaware of the second layer," Olivia said.
"I believe Stephanie Offrey told her exactly enough to secure her cooperation and not one word more. Carla thinks this is a kidnapping. The Rachelle contingent are planning a murder." Leon looked over his shoulder. "That's going to matter, when this is over."
"You're going to give her a chance."
It wasn't a question. Olivia knew him too well for questions like that.
"I'm going to give her exactly one chance. What she does with it is her problem."
Olivia picked up her apple again and took a bite. "You're too kind, you know that?"
Leon shrugged, stepped into the corridor, and pulled the door shut behind him. The patrol craft hummed beneath his boots—Luxion's engines running smooth and steady, pushing them towards the forward anchorage at increasing speed. Through the porthole to his left, the sky stretched out in deepening twilight, the last amber of sunset bleeding into indigo along the horizon. Floating rocks drifted past in the middle distance, their undersides dark, their crowns catching the dying light.
He walked. Not towards the bridge. Not towards the guest cabin where Carla Wayne sat chewing her fingernails to the quick. Just—walked. Boot heels on metal deck plating, the sound rhythmic and grounding.
'Sixty-seven demonic armours.'
The number sat in his mind like a stone dropped into still water. Ripples spreading outward, touching everything.
At the Rachelle border, they'd faced incursions of five. Ten. Once, a concentrated push of twenty that had required Mégane and three guardian spirits working in concert to repel. Twenty demonic armours had been enough to warrant an emergency report to the Crown and a restructuring of their patrol rotations.
Sixty-seven was not an incursion. Sixty-seven was an assault package. The kind of force you deployed when you wanted something destroyed and didn't care about the collateral. The kind of force that would chew through a conventional military formation and keep moving.
Not that any of it would reach the Partner. Luxion's point-defence grid alone could handle the armours if they approached in the open. And they wouldn't be approaching in the open—they'd be approaching under cover of a thousand-ship pirate engagement, in the chaos and debris of a fleet action, counting on confusion and divided attention to close the distance.
Which meant the engagement had to be controlled. Precise. The pirates dealt with quickly enough that the transport couldn't hide behind the battle. The armours engaged before they could reach the hull.
And then—after the shooting stopped and the hulls cooled—the real work would begin. Because a pirate fleet was a military problem. Demonic armours sourced from Rachelle through an Offrey intermediary was a political problem. The kind of problem that could reshape the kingdom's internal power structure if handled correctly—or trigger a civil crisis if handled badly.
Erica would be halfway to the capital by then. Fast vessel, priority clearance, a princess of the blood carrying evidence that no bureaucratic filter could intercept or delay. She wouldn't file a report. She'd walk into her father's study—or her mother's chambers—and lay the evidence out herself. Roland would see it with his own eyes. Mylene would read the intercepted communications with her own sharp mind. And whatever happened next—whatever action the evidence demanded—would arrive at the Crown already verified, already contextualised, already delivered by a member of the royal family who had been present when the conspiracy was uncovered.
'She understood. She always does.'
The look in Erica's eyes when she'd said you intend to do more than destroy the fleet. Not a question. An observation. She'd seen the shape of what was coming—the same shape Leon could feel pressing against the back of his thoughts, growing clearer with every step down the dim corridor.
A marquise house that had imported enemy war materiel to assassinate a Crown-appointed border lord. That had conspired with a hostile foreign power against their own kingdom. That had, through greed and staggering miscalculation, handed Leon Fou Bartfort the legal and moral authority to do what no viscount should have the standing to do.
He didn't think about it in those terms. Not yet. Not explicitly. The plan hadn't grown that far—the bones were there, but the flesh would come later, after the engagement, after the armours were dealt with, after Erica was safely away and the Crown had been informed. Leon was not a man who built castles of strategy in his mind and then bent reality to match. He was a man who saw the next step clearly, took it, and trusted that the step after would reveal itself in time.
But the shape was there all the same. Unavoidable. Inevitable.
He reached the end of the corridor and stopped at the viewport. Below and ahead, the floating rocks of the border region hung in the darkening sky like scattered teeth. Somewhere beyond them, the forward anchorage waited. The Partner waited.
And beyond all of that, hidden behind a screen of barren stone, a ship full of nightmares waited too.
Leon pressed his forehead against the cool glass.
'We might be doing something more than destroying a pirate fleet.'
The thought settled. Crystallised.
He pushed off from the viewport and turned back towards the cabin. Three hours until the anchorage. Three hours to prepare. Three hours before Carla Fou Wayne stepped onto the Partner's deck and discovered that the man she'd betrayed had known about it from the moment she pressed her communication stone.
Three hours before everything changed.
-=&
End