Chương 231: 90. Second-Class Cabin 2

I woke the next morning inside a very strange kind of calm. To be clear — it wasn't because we'd beaten Takenaka the day before, and it wasn't because I'd finally crossed over into the civilized tier that comes with a private bathroom, a real mattress, and legally sanctioned satellite access. Both of those were, admittedly, worth being happy about. What actually produced that first-waking thought of oh, I'm still alive, and marginally more alive than yesterday was the quiet. No one turning over two bunks away.

No one kicking a bed frame in the middle of the night. No line of people in the corridor cursing each other's ancestors while waiting for the sink. The quiet of a second-class double is basically cheating. I lay there staring at the ceiling for three seconds before the situation came back to me in full. Right. I'd moved into second class last night. Right. My roommate is Maki. Right.

Jess had come by and, before she'd consent to leave, had used the words double room as kindling to set the whole place on a slow burn.... Great. A brain that's just woken up should not be reviewing any of that. It makes you want to pull the covers back over your head and play dead before you've even sat up. I rolled over and glanced at the other bed. Maki was already up.

Her covers were folded with a precision so exact it looked like no one had ever slept there — the kind of crispness that made me seriously wonder whether she maintains some internal Federal fold-angle standard even while unconscious. A faint sound of water came from behind the bathroom door. I pressed my face into the pillow for two seconds, seriously weighing whether I could just stay exactly where I was.

The second-class mattress was unreasonably, almost unfairly, more comfortable than anything in the shared berths. Then I heard the bathroom door open.

"Awake?" Maki's voice came from inside, flat as ever, like the phrase the morning after sharing a room didn't even exist as something people might overthink. I lifted my face from the pillow.

"... How do you know I'm awake?"

"You just turned over. Loudly."

"That's your data point?"

"It's enough." She'd already hung up her towel and changed into today's training gear — straps squared, hair done, clean and sharp enough that she looked less like a student living on a warship and more like a young officer on her way to take command of a compartment. It annoyed me more than I wanted to admit.

"Do you complete human evolution the second you get out of bed?" Maki glanced at me.

"No."

"Then how come you already look like you've forecast exactly how many times we're going to die today?"

"Because the moment we moved in last night, I knew the mess hall wasn't going to be quiet this morning."... Right. Annoying. And correct. I pushed myself up and scrubbed a hand through my hair, then remembered something.

"You really don't snore." Maki paused for a beat, then gave me a very faint look.

"That's your first priority on waking up?"

"It's important. Long-term habitability's at stake."

"Then congratulations," Maki said, voice flat.

"Your civilized housing rights remain intact." I almost laughed. Fine. So the hardware upgrade came with a roommate whose conversation module held up too. By the time we were both dressed and walking to the mess hall together, it was clear Maki's morning prediction had been an understatement. Because the real noise wasn't sound. It was eyes.

The mess didn't fall silent when we walked in — that would have been dramatic — but every head at our table lifted once, at exactly the same moment, and the way they lifted said plenty. D let out a silent whistle. Harvey bent over his soup, shoulders shaking, clearly biting back a laugh. Roy held his cup with a very proper expression — the kind of proper that only exists because speaking right now would be rude.

Lan was the cleanest about it: one glance up, one glance down, straight back to cutting her breakfast, radiating I know everything and have decided not to waste words on it. And Jess — Jess was completely wrong. Ordinary Jess likes to press one finger to a bruise and watch your face change. This morning's Jess had gone full auntie-mode.

Not a normal smile — the kind where the corners won't come down, the eyes are too bright, and nothing's even been said yet but you already know she's got thirty pages written in her head. I'd barely pulled my chair out before she spoke.

"Morning, second-class residents." My hand froze on the chair back.

"Are you planning to run that title until we're back on campus?" Jess smiled like an indulgent relative.

"Depends on your performance."

"Performance in what?"

"Cohabitation performance." My eye twitched.

"Eat your breakfast."

"I am." She cut a piece of egg, looked back up, smile still in place.

"Just checking in on how well you two slept."

"Fine," Maki said, sitting down beside me, tone as level as a cabin-pressure reading. Jess's smile deepened.

"Oh — fine." I genuinely wanted to put my tray through her face. Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

"What's that 'oh' supposed to mean?"

"Nothing." Jess cradled her mug, the picture of innocence.

"I'm just glad to see my teammates getting proper rest in a superior housing environment." D finally lost it and coughed.

"Jess, your face right now makes you look like a relative doing a post-wedding house visit." Harvey nearly shot soup out his nose. Jess didn't even argue. She nodded, entirely natural about it.

"Thank you. I'll take that as validation of my observational skills."

"Can you not treat everything as a compliment—" I pressed a hand to my forehead, seriously reconsidering last night's decision to open the door. Maki, for her part, remained completely unaffected, picking up her cutlery as if the whole table were ambient noise. Which, of course, only invited escalation. D leaned in right on cue.

"So you two really slept well?" Maki looked at him.

"Is this a housing-quality survey, or are you trying to get hit?"

"I'm just checking on the responsible use of civilized resources."

"Then go ask Sergeant Takenaka whether Security Division takes tour requests." Roy tried very hard not to laugh, failed, and turned it into a cough. I actually felt a little sorry for them. Because the person suffering most right now wasn't me — it was everyone at this table who badly wanted to pile on, while knowing full well that pushing one inch too far meant I'd flip the table. Jess, fearless as ever, kept that unsettling auntie smile fixed in place.

"I think it's nice, actually," she said, slow and drawling.

"A second-class double is exactly the environment for cultivating—""Jess."

"—chemistry." I closed my eyes and breathed.... Fine. At least she hadn't finished with the other word. Unfortunately, D wasn't about to let that gap go to waste.

"I thought you were going to say feelings."

"Shut up," Jess and I said, almost in unison. D spread his hands.

"See? That sync rate is already a problem."

"Cut it by half today," Harvey said, finally setting his spoon down, pained.

"I just started eating. I don't want stomach cramps from laughing this early." The table was a full circus of expressions. The star of it, obviously, was Jess — she didn't even need to speak anymore. Just sitting there with that smile was enough to warp a normal breakfast into something closer to a public execution. Right as I was ready to give up on normal conversation and focus on eating, every terminal at the table buzzed at once. Not just mine. Everyone's.

The synchronized vibration sliced clean through the noise. We all looked down together. A fleet-wide assessment notice from the Captain's office. The third one. The second I saw the header, my stomach had a bad feeling before my brain caught up. Third Assessment: Basic Engine Structure & Maintenance / Zero-Gravity Extravehicular Repair Instructor listed underneath: Instructor: Lieutenant Commander Victor Nikolayevich Borodin (Chief Engineer) The table went quiet for two seconds.

Then, predictably, the first to reboot was Harvey.

"Wait." He sat bolt upright, eyes lighting.

"The Chief Engineer's teaching this himself? Seriously?" That kind of brightness was rare on him. Normal Harvey lives in the practical band — staying alive is enough, please don't let me be first, I'll eat nutrient paste every day if it keeps me safe. Seeing him light up over a course title alone was like watching someone drop a full rack of limited-edition engine models in front of his face. D stared at him, openly in awe.

"You're making that face over an assessment notice."

"This is called professional joy."

"I thought your whole personality was caution and stomach pain."

"That's when I'm dealing with you people."

"That's hurtful."

"Truth usually is," Lan said. I looked back down at my terminal. Basic engine structure. Basic maintenance. Zero-gravity extravehicular repair.... Great. This ship apparently intended to walk us through every single way to die, compartment by compartment. Flight sim: die in open space. Boarding drills: die in the corridors. Now — go to Engineering and learn how not to die outside the hull. The Federal military's educational philosophy really was comprehensive, in a way that was genuinely chilling.

Jess had dropped the auntie smile, replaced by fresh interest.

"Extravehicular repair." She tapped her fork against the tray.

"Finally something other than chopping each other up inside the ship."

"Do you have a fundamental misunderstanding of the word 'finally'?" I asked.

"No." She glanced at me, smiling.

"I'm just curious whether you're still going to be this stubborn in zero-G."

"That sentence sounds like you think you know me."

"Better than some people assume."... How does she manage to land a jab while eating breakfast. Beside me, Maki had already scrolled to the time and muster point.

"Half an hour. Engine room." Harvey was on his feet before she'd even finished.

"I'm changing my boots." D watched him go, expression complicated.

"You look exactly like a grade-schooler the night before a field trip." Harvey paused, then answered with total sincerity.

"If the field trip's the engine bay with the Chief Engineer personally guiding, then yes. About right." Roy pressed a hand to his face.

"He's broken. Harvey's actually broken."

"I'm not broken," Harvey said, terminal already pocketed, eyes still bright.

"I've finally been assigned a class worth something." Watching him practically radiate little sparks of enthusiasm, I felt an odd urge to laugh. Fine. At least one person heading to Engineering today would be in a healthy mental state. That was already more than I'd expected. The deeper we went toward Engineering, the louder it got. Not one sound — a mass of low, heavy, continuous mechanical noise, layered together, like the ship's bones and organs were grinding and roaring in some enormous shared rhythm.

The walls thrummed now and then; the handrail under my palm carried a fine, constant vibration. Honestly, not a comfortable environment for a normal person. Especially not for me. Because the deeper we went, the clearer it became: we were heading toward the place that actually kept the Yukikaze alive. Flight sims, boarding drills, dorms, mess hall, Security Division classrooms — no matter how intense, all of that was still just people living on a ship. The engine room wasn't.

The engine room was why the ship was alive at all. And it made very clear, at considerable volume, that it did not care about your feelings. I rubbed my ear.

"Is it always this loud down here?"

"More or less," Maki said, having to raise her voice slightly to be heard. Ahead of us, Harvey didn't look like he was walking. He looked like he was coming home. I'd never seen anyone get visibly happier the closer they got to an engine room — happy enough that even his back read this is exactly where I belong. D watched him, baffled.

"I genuinely don't understand. Shouldn't a normal person's first thought at this noise be is this about to explode?"

"That's the difference between you and an engineering brain," Roy said.

"So what does an engineering brain think?" Harvey answered without turning around.

"Wow, that's a nice sound — the RPM must be beautiful." D went quiet for two seconds.

"... Terrifying."

"That's exactly what I thought," I muttered. Jess, completely unbothered by the noise, was looking around with real interest.

"Smell's pretty heavy down here too." She wasn't wrong. Hot metal, machine oil, the chemical edge of the cooling systems, and that hard-to-name dry, scorched heat that only comes from high-output equipment running long and hard — all mixed together. Not unpleasant. Just aggressive. A little further on, the escorting petty officer led us to a small isolated briefing room right off the main engine bay. The door opened, and the noise dropped by half instantly. I nearly wanted to bow to the soundproofing.

Then we saw today's instructor. Lieutenant Commander Victor Nikolayevich Borodin. Chief Engineer.... How to put this. If you dropped this man in a dockside black-market tavern and handed him a battered captain's hat, I wouldn't doubt for a second he'd spent yesterday running cargo with a crew of outlaws. A striped sailor's shirt. A Federal uniform jacket draped loosely over it. A beard thick and present enough to have its own gravitational field.

And an expression — half-lidded, somewhere between just-woken-up and never-fully-awake — that wasn't "a bit of a pirate look." This was a living pirate specimen the Federal military had stamped with a service number and shoved directly into Engineering. Standing in the back row, I arrived at a conclusion that was deeply disrespectful and completely accurate: the Federation had put a drunk on the payroll, and apparently nobody had filed a complaint. Because before Victor said a word, he took a drink. Yes. A drink.

Not my imagination, not an exaggeration. Whatever was in that flask was strong enough to reach the back row — like someone had wheeled a still into the briefing room and misted the air with it for effect. Jess clearly caught the scent too; the corner of her mouth twitched. D leaned toward me and dropped his voice.

"I'm starting to miss Sergeant Takenaka."

"You called him an executioner yesterday."

"Executioners at least stand up straight." D looked pained. Victor himself seemed to find nothing at all unusual about any of this. He set the bottle — or rather, the metal flask that had no business existing in a teaching space — down on the desk with a solid clank, then looked up and swept his eyes over us. It was a strange kind of look. Not an officer's sharp assessment, not an instructor's fault-finding scan.

More like a man who'd just crawled out from beside the main drive and been informed, somewhat abruptly, that he was responsible today for a batch of young creatures from an entirely different trade — and was now instinctively checking whether they had hands, whether they breathed, and whether they were worth wasting words on.

"Victor Nikolayevich Borodin," he said, slow, voice like sandpaper on iron plate.

"Chief Engineer. Yukikaze." He looked hazy enough that I genuinely worried he might fall asleep sitting up mid-sentence.

"You," Victor said, narrowing his eyes as he swept us again, "call me Victor. Or Chief Engineer." Nobody rushed to answer. Not out of respect — mostly because everyone was still trying to process the fact that this alcohol-soaked, deeply pirate-shaped man was, in fact, the Yukikaze's Chief Engineer. Victor didn't seem to care either way. He tapped a finger against the desk, as if finally reeling his focus back to the present.

Then he squinted at us and asked, with what looked like complete, genuine confusion:"You're... not engineers, are you?" I sat in the back row, breathing air that had to be at least forty proof, looking at a face up front that seemed one sentence away from saying forget it, don't bother fixing this ship, just blow it up and requisition a new one — and had exactly one thought left.... Fuck. How did the Federation get someone like this into a regulation posting.