Chương 163: 14. Legacy of the Past 2

I stared at the two torpedoes on her shoulders, my mind cycling through several deeply unhelpful questions. Do dragon children use battering rams as exercise equipment? Did I actually die in yesterday's crash landing, and am I currently watching an extremely unreasonable afterlife performance? If I ask 'Your Highness, where exactly do you intend to go while carrying two ancient ship-killers,' will that make me seem unforgivably slow on the uptake? I selected the most diplomatic option available.

"... Your Highness."

"Mm?"

"I need a reason. Ideally one that, upon hearing it, does not make me immediately regret being alive." Ignicia stood before me, one torpedo per shoulder, expression as composed as if she were carrying two rolled carpets.

"The reason is simple," she said flatly.

"First: we cannot operate this ship. Second: we cannot take it with us. Third: since we cannot take it, we must ensure no one else can use it."

"So you've decided to destroy the entire vessel."

"Obviously."

"I just wanted to confirm those weren't intended as negotiating leverage." She gave me a look—weighing whether I was genuinely dense or using conversation to manage my nerves. She answered anyway.

"I'm not going to fire them," she said.

"I'm going to use them as demolition charges." This was entirely consistent with the Fire Dragon Princess's approach to problems: brutal, direct, and providing zero emotional comfort. I rubbed my brow, trying to keep my voice within the range of rational discourse.

"All right. Demolition charges. Why two?"

"Because one is luck. Two is a plan." The torpedoes shifted slightly on her shoulders, metal casings scraping against her clothing with a deeply ominous sound.

"One charge might not kill the ship completely. Ancient construction is too durable, too good at surviving. I need one placed deep in the weapons section to trigger secondary detonations. The other has to go somewhere more critical."

"The power core?"

"Either the power core, or somewhere that will flood the vessel, start fires, and permanently bury those light-spears in its belly." Her voice dropped several degrees when she mentioned the light-spears. I knew what she was thinking. Because I was thinking the same thing. If the Blazing Yanxia Empire found a way to activate this ancient monstrosity called Texas, the consequences wouldn't be a burned fortress or an escalated border conflict.

Someone would have dragged the ending itself back out of poetry and ruins and made it present tense again. And we were currently standing inside that coffin, with the singular advantage that no one else had fully pried the lid off yet. I looked at the two torpedoes on her shoulders and let out a deeply resigned sigh.

"Fine," I said.

"I'm convinced. Next question." She raised an eyebrow.

"How exactly do we move them?" This time she actually smiled. Not warmth. Not mockery. The particular satisfaction of someone who had just received the first useful question of the conversation. Then she shifted the left torpedo toward me. A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation. I reached out on pure instinct. The next instant, I nearly went to my knees.

"—Your Highness!" The forward end plunged downward. My entire arm went numb from the pull, my shoulder suddenly bearing what felt like half a person's worth of extra weight. If I hadn't reacted fast enough—stepping back and throwing my other arm up to brace—that thing would have gone straight into the deck and permanently ended my relationship with my own feet. Ignicia observed my predicament with an expression of near-compassionate calm.

"I didn't tell you to carry it alone."

"Your Highness, in future, could you perhaps deliver such clarifications before the ordnance makes contact with my skeleton?"

"If you knew too early, you might have run." That was giving me entirely too much credit. At this point, even if I wanted to run, there was nowhere left to go. In the end, we settled on a carrying method more compatible with human skeletal load limits. She kept one torpedo balanced on her shoulder like an exceptionally lethal roll of carpet. The other we moved together—I gripped the nose while she handled the rear and midsection, half-carrying, half-dragging it along.

Even so, every inch of progress produced a nerve-wracking scrape of metal against deck plating. I began to suspect that even if the sea-dragon search party hadn't pinpointed our location yet, the acoustics alone would inform them that two lunatics were relocating ancient ship-killers somewhere inside the hull.

"Lighter... lighter..." I hissed through clenched teeth as I dragged my end.

"Your Highness, it just occurred to me that if we don't get killed by the enemy but instead get crushed by your preferred explosives, that's going to be exceedingly difficult to explain to historians."

"Don't worry," Ignicia said.

"Historians rarely care whether you died with dignity. They only care whether your death had value."

"Wonderful," I panted.

"I'm currently being dragged along by an exceptionally valuable torpedo." She didn't argue. Not only did she not argue—she added, with terrifying composure:"Keep your grip steady. If this one slips, I can still take the other." I shut my mouth and devoted all remaining energy to the project of staying alive.

We proceeded using a method that would never appear in any military manual yet remained technically functional—dragging two torpedoes out of the weapons bay through corridors that had no business accommodating such cargo. The passages were narrow; the torpedoes were long. Navigating corners felt like relocating an extremely ill-tempered iron fish.

My end nearly struck the bulkhead several times, and once got completely wedged in a hatchway, forcing both of us to stop and stare at each other across the weapon's length. In that moment, we were undoubtedly thinking the same thing: If this detonates here, at least we can save on burial expenses.

"Left," she said.

"I am already as far left as physics permits."

"The torpedo needs to go left, Cedric. Not your political philosophy."

"Noted. I'll treasure that distinction." We finally bullied it around the corner, and only then did I release the breath I'd been holding. But the moment we stopped, the tension sharpened rather than eased. The hull was too quiet—so quiet that every breath and scrape of metal seemed amplified. From somewhere deeper, those faint, muffled impacts continued—the sound of pursuers working their way layer by layer into the ancient monster's belly. We couldn't afford to linger. Ignicia clearly knew it.

She propped the torpedo against the bulkhead and moved to the schematic copy I'd torn from the bridge, smoothing it against the wall. She traced her finger between the mid and aft sections under the light.

"This is our current position," she murmured.

"Further forward on the port side should be the ordnance transfer zone. Beyond that lies the more dangerous territory."

"Dangerous meaning the power core?"

"Or something worse than the power core." She glanced at me.

"If the ancients built something capable of keeping this vessel running for millennia, we shouldn't touch it without understanding it completely." I nodded. Complete agreement there. Targeting an incomprehensible ancient power source sounded like the kind of death that gets relegated to historical footnotes about exemplary stupidity.

By comparison, detonating an ammunition depot was pleasantly straightforward: ancient weapons plus ancient explosives typically produced one highly predictable outcome—a much larger explosion.

"Ordnance transfer zone first," I said.

"We place the first charge there." She tapped a square on the diagram.

"If that goes, it should tear through the adjacent weapons bays and mid-section corridors. Then we assess whether there's time to deliver the second charge further aft."

"And if there isn't?" She folded the schematic, her expression turning glacial.

"Then we ensure this ship is never worth opening again." I looked at her and realized how perfectly that sentence captured her essence. Not the gentlest option. Not the most elegant solution. The most absolute, scorched-earth insurance policy available. Exactly what we needed. I bent down to reclaim my portion of the suffering. The torpedo's casing was cold as dead moonlight; the moment I gripped it, my shoulder filed a formal complaint about future working conditions.

Ignicia had already hoisted the other torpedo back onto her shoulder, seamlessly collecting the bag of plastic explosives and metal tubes with her free hand. I watched her—one torpedo on her shoulder, demolition materials in hand, standing perfectly composed—and finally couldn't help myself.

"Your Highness."

"Mm?"

"I've just achieved a moment of profound clarity."

"Speak."

"Yesterday, when you regained human form and chose not to casually fold me in half, you were exhibiting remarkable restraint toward human society." She looked at me sideways, the corner of her mouth moving almost imperceptibly.

"Better late than never to realize this."... At least her mood was stable. Which usually meant the truly catastrophic part was still ahead. We moved out again. Not toward the bridge or living quarters, but down that metal corridor that grew colder and more densely marked with warnings—dragging two ancient torpedoes capable of sinking conventional warships deeper into the dark.