Chương 197: 75. Shipboard Orientation 1

The Yukikaze's boarding process had a very Federation military quality to it — meaning precise, cold, and entirely uninterested in factoring anyone's adolescent emotions into the equation. First, the outer security perimeter. Marines with rifles stood on either side of the sensor gate, their dark grey assault suits making them look like a row of mobile boarding rams, caps pulled low, faces that couldn't even be bothered to write don't try anything across them.

Inside that came the identity verification zone — terminal scans, wristband authentication, personal-item numbering, hazard screening, temporary cabin and zone access issued on the spot. Nothing in the process was particularly rough, but nothing in it let you feel like you'd arrived somewhere for a holiday either. Everyone had to step up to the marked line, push their box onto the conveyor, and stand there while a machine scanned them the way you'd process an incoming shipment of military supplies.

Honestly, that was the moment I understood, very clearly, for the first time: in the Federation's eyes, the only real difference between a person and their luggage was probably just where they stuck the barcode. When our group filed into the boarding queue, Jess was already up front, tapping her toe impatiently.

"How many times do they need to scan us?" She pushed her box forward, frowning.

"Didn't they already check us outside?" The NCO at the registration desk didn't look up.

"Outside cleared harbor entry. This clears boarding authorization. Next."... Very standard. Very shipboard. Very well-designed to drive Jess to the edge of reason.

"Is there really that much of a difference?" Jess glared at him, the I've had enough today and you are not helping heat in her voice climbing steadily.

"For the Federation military? Yes." The NCO finally looked up, eyes as calm as if he were looking at a piece of luggage that had started making noise on its own.

"Miss, if you'd like to find out where people without boarding clearance sleep tonight, I can file that request for you." I nearly laughed. The next second, Maki said, very quietly, from beside me:"Serves her right." I turned to look. Her face had no particular expression. Her jacket was heavy with harbor damp, dark hair pressed against the side of her neck, the whole of her unreasonably composed.

The thing was, she'd said it while her feet had already shifted half a step forward without any fuss, placing herself exactly in the line of sight between Jess and the NCO — as if she were already positioned to press this particular hazard back into the process before it actually went off. This woman's mouth was harder than anyone's. Her body was painfully honest. When it was my turn, the scanner ran from head to toe, and my information lit up on the terminal screen.

Academy ID number, temporary onboard zone clearance, bunk assignment, training flags — cold white text appearing line by line, as if translating me from Hoshino Shimo into a string of system codes that were easier to manage. When the female lieutenant handed over my temporary ID chip, her eyes lingered on my academy uniform for half a second. In that instant, I felt the weight of the rule itself, very clearly, all over again. The Yukikaze's regular crew wore Federation uniforms.

Officers in sharp black-and-silver dress. NCOs and junior staff in grey-black duty gear. Deck and cabin assault troops in something that looked like it could go outside and pick a fight with a vacuum. Only us — only Class 144 — were still in academy uniforms. Not because we were making a statement, but because without the Captain's authorization, we had no right to wear the Yukikaze's colors. We'd been allowed on board. That wasn't the same as being recognized as belonging here. That feeling was ugly.

You were already past the threshold, and your clothes still insisted you were a guest. The boarding ramp was longer than I'd expected, and quieter. The anti-slip metal grating underfoot was cold with harbor damp. Guide lights ran along both railings all the way up into the Yukikaze's open hatch. The entrance wasn't ornate, wasn't grand — almost aggressively utilitarian, like some huge mechanical creature too lazy to open its jaws properly, leaving only a gap wide enough to walk through.

I hauled my box up, Maki half a step behind my right shoulder. Neither of us spoke. Ahead, Jess was still muttering about Federation administrative procedure. Behind us, Harvey wore the expression of a man who'd cheerfully strap someone and their box to the freight lift together if they kept it up. D moved with her gear like she wasn't boarding a warship so much as walking into an unremarkable lab.

Akari was reading terminal assignment data as she walked, eyes focused enough that she'd clearly already begun optimizing spatial layout for an eight-person cabin. I was the one whose chest sank the instant my foot crossed the threshold. The air inside was different from the rainy night outside. Less moisture. More metal, recycled air, cleaning agents, and a faint, indescribable mechanical warmth. The lighting was clean white, with no temperature to it.

The bulkheads were flat and hard, marked at intervals with numbers, arrows, zone indicators, and emergency lights — every line straight with a very Federation temperament. There was no welcome here. Only routing. No make yourself comfortable. Only follow procedure. The moment you stepped inside, you understood: the Yukikaze wasn't built for comfort. It was built so human beings could maintain basic function, for a while, inside a weapon. Then the chaos started.

"Where's my box?" Jess was the first to blow. No surprise there. The baggage line and the personnel line weren't the same line. Large cargo went to an internal staging area first, then got routed by cabin. A normal person looks at the flow diagram and thinks: ah, makes sense. Jess looks at the flow diagram and thinks: did the Federation pay someone specifically to make people want to swear. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

"My box was on that cart!" She stood at the routing junction like a raptor whose nest had been robbed.

"Which genius made it disappear?" Before the young sailor guiding traffic could answer, D said, flat as ever:"It didn't disappear. It got routed to Section B. You were too busy yelling to check the digital tags." Jess spun to glare at her.

"You saw it and didn't say anything sooner?"

"I wanted to see how long it would take you to figure it out yourself."... Right. I dragged my own box off the conveyor, felt the weight sink into my arm, and finally found something comforting in that — at least dead weight didn't play the Kushima family's language games. The next second, Maki's hand caught the corner of my side box, stopping it as it started to slide off the platform.

"Watch where you're going," she said.

"I am watching," I said, reflexively.

"You're not." Flat, no inflection.

"You've been walking like someone hit you in the head with a wrench since you got off that car." I nearly choked.... Right. Thank you. I had, in fact, just been worked over by your sister's regulation-grade blunt instrument, otherwise known as gentle conversation. Not exactly something I could say out loud.

So I just straightened the box, and in the least dignified corner of my brain, replayed Aki's parting line — give my regards to Maki — while wondering exactly what level of internal Kushima-family alert code that phrase actually mapped to. Jess had already progressed from where's my box to why does an eight-person cabin have to hold eight people.

"Eight beds, eight people. What's confusing about that?" Harvey said, deadpan.

"Everything's confusing about that!" Jess turned on him.

"Eight bodies in one room isn't quarters — that's stacking humans onto shelves!"

"The Federation doesn't classify complaints about space as combat damage," Akari said, checking cabin numbers as she walked.

"Also, based on your average footprint and rate of object expansion, you alone will likely consume one and a half bunk widths." Roy, helping Lan shift a long case aside, laughed out loud at that. Lan gave him a quick, quiet elbow — the kind that suggested this ship wasn't yet the venue for laughing too freely. The gesture was too natural, too practiced, familiar enough that my brain flashed straight to something I had no business thinking about right now.... No.

The intelligence density on this ship was already high enough without me loading the gossip module on top. I'd overheat.

"What are you laughing at?" Jess, predictably, turned her fire on Roy.

"Nothing, I just—""You'd better actually mean that." Jess hugged her box, radiating an aura of nobody's having a good night.

"And you two — pick your bunks separately later. Don't you dare do that synchronized-carry couple routine in front of me. My eyes don't deserve it." Roy choked. Lan's brow creased slightly, as if he wanted to argue and thought better of it — which only made him look guiltier. I was genuinely close to laughing. Not because it was funny — because it was so familiar. So Number 22.

So thoroughly Number 22 that for a second I forgot I was standing on the Yukikaze, a two-hundred-and-twenty-five-meter Federation destroyer built to carry people into war and the deep unknown. And right then, Maki very impatiently picked up my other small box.

"Does standing there staring save energy?" I looked at her. Her face was blank, her tone the same flat annoyance as always, as if she were simply irritated by someone blocking the aisle and slowing the group's collective throughput. But the way she'd picked up my box was smooth — the kind of smooth that said this was something she'd always planned to do half of.

"... Didn't you say I should carry these myself?"

"I said watch your step."

"Aren't those the same thing?"

"No." She didn't look at me as she turned toward the berthing section.

"The first one is criticism. The second one is a rescue." Oh. Great. Thank you for confirming, in exactly those terms, that no one in the Kushima family knows how to say anything like a normal human being. Once we moved past the routing junction into the berthing area, the Yukikaze's soundscape changed too.

The intake beeps, command calls, and rattling luggage wheels faded, replaced by the steadier sigh of ventilation, the low thrum of distant piping, the occasional dull thud of someone's box catching a guard rail on a turn. The corridor narrowed. The lighting didn't soften — it just lost some of the public-space pressure of the boarding zone and gained the quiet, boxed-in feeling of humans being filed into compartments. We stopped outside a door marked with our cabin number.

When the hatch slid open, my first thought was: the Federation really does have a gift for using limited space to remind you not to expect too much from life. The room was more orderly than I'd imagined. Bunks were built into both walls, stacked top and bottom like pre-cut storage cells. Every bunk had a curtain, a reading light, and a personal locker. At the far end, a round porthole looked out on a night sky washed pale by harbor light.

The overhead lighting ran slightly warm — enough to lift the room from military storage unit to military storage unit where humans might plausibly sleep.

"All right, assignments." Akari looked down at her terminal, reading it like an unappealable objective fact.

"D, Jess, Hoshino, Maki, Harvey, me, Roy, Lan. This cabin."

"... Hold on." Jess's hand shot up.

"Why am I in with this many people?"

"Because the universe hasn't reorganized itself around your personal needs yet," Harvey said, without expression.

"Are you actually trying to start something with me today?"

"If you want to fight, put the luggage down first," D said, calm as ever.

"Otherwise your stance looks terrible." I pushed my box to the base of a bunk and finally let out a slow breath. Down the corridor, Aida was checking another cabin's assignment list — Ash and Evelyn's names were on it. Which meant the three upperclassmen really did have their own space, not crammed in with us. Sound institutionally. Sound psychologically too — if Aida and Jess had to share a cabin overnight, I genuinely doubted the Yukikaze would make it to Pike VI intact.

"Where are you sleeping?" Maki asked, suddenly.

"... Haven't decided." She glanced down the two rows of bunks and pointed to a lower bunk toward the inner wall, midway down.

"There."

"Why?"

"It's against the wall. If you have a nightmare, you're less likely to roll off." I glared at her.

"I don't do that."

"Oh." A faint, uninterested sound.

"Then call it me being nosy." And then she actually set her own bag down on the bunk right beside it. I stared at the motion. My brain went quiet for exactly one beat.... She's sleeping next to me? Beside us, Jess had launched into a three-hundred-word treatise on the injustice of upper versus lower bunks. Roy was helping Lan wedge a long case into a locker. Harvey watched the room with the eyes of a man surveying a disaster site, calculating how bad it would get.

D and Akari had already entered calm planning mode, subject: how to maximize shared space and minimize Jess's expansion radius. Everything around me went quiet for a second. Just the bag. Just the fact that Maki had chosen the bunk beside mine. And of course, Aki's voice floated back up, completely uninvited — Are you the kind of person who can be held in someone's mind, and still walk away as if nothing happened?... Please. Could that question, at minimum, wait until I've finished putting my box down.

Standing in the middle of the eight-person cabin, hand still on the handle, I understood something with sudden, inconvenient clarity. The Yukikaze was enormous. The Federation's procedures were thorough. This ship had a bridge, a reactor, a mess hall, eight-person cabins, a formal crew roster, a duty rotation, weapons, and a chain of command. But the moment I actually started to panic wasn't at the boarding gate. It wasn't when I saw the shadow of the main guns.

It was when Maki set her bag down on the bunk beside mine.... Fuck. At this rate, I'm not going to die in the war. I'm going to die caught between the Kushima sisters' pincer attack and my own heart rate.