Earth Defense Force Headquarters.
"Report! An unidentified attack occurred above Earth just moments ago. An orbital strike, apparently a high-energy beam, was fired from Japan's W24 Weather Observation Satellite and appears to have hit a ground target!"
A staff officer hurried in to deliver his report.
Naturally, an attack from a satellite-mounted laser weapon could not escape Earth's major astronomical observation systems. Such an obvious high-energy beam left an infrared trail that would linger for quite some time.
"What? An unidentified attack? Fired from a Japanese satellite?" All three supreme commanders were stunned.
Before the Ghost Captain's sudden appearance, no country had possessed the ability to install laser weapons on its satellites. America's Star Wars program in the previous century had proposed something along those lines, but in the end... it had proved to be nothing but hot air.
And after the Ghost Captain appeared... well, at this point, did any country still need to install laser weapons on satellites?
His space battleships were already floating in Earth Orbit. Unless they fired thousands of laser weapons at once, they posed little threat to those ships. Otherwise, it would be about as effective as threatening an aircraft carrier with a water pistol...
Every country had at least that much self-awareness. When it came to control over Earth Orbit, they had essentially given up and buried their heads in the sand. No one dared risk testing the Ghost Captain's limits.
So they simply could not believe that Japan's satellite carried an operational laser weapon.
"Where was the target?" Yuri asked.
"According to our preliminary assessment, the target of this mysterious attack was a private estate in Ukraine. Based on the intelligence we have, it was very likely a secret base belonging to the Skull Society, an assassin organization," the staff officer replied.