Chương 252: 102. Planet Pike VI 1

The bridge went quiet for a few seconds. Not the easy kind of quiet that follows relief. Something more complicated than that — like our bodies hadn't fully stepped down from the high-pressure operation yet, while our brains had already been shoved into a new protocol: All right. Now let's calculate exactly how stupid you all were. The Yukikaze had settled into her berth, steady and clean. We hadn't scraped the dock wall. We hadn't treated the boarding arm like a single-use consumable.

We hadn't handed the Federal Fleet a repair bill they could mail straight to the Academy's face. By any reasonable measure, that counted as a good outcome. By Captain Tobita's standards, it probably only qualified as not quite bad enough to return the whole batch of us. Tobita stood at the front of the bridge, one hand resting on the back of the captain's chair — the kind of chair that could shave ten years off your psychological lifespan just by existing — and took his time sweeping his gaze across the row of us.

It was the look of an old fisherman. Not the retired, nature-loving kind who smiles for photos by the river. More the kind who's been fishing his whole life, can't be bothered to react to a twitching float anymore, and just wants to see whether today's catch — the kind that jumped onto the hook all by itself — is even worth taking home and gutting for the pan.

"Although the first half of this bridge simulation only earned you about half marks," he said, his voice as flat as someone reading off a supply manifest that didn't deserve any feeling,"the second half — the live-deployment portion — was passable." Passable. Listen to that.

We had just nearly driven a 225 m destroyer into the dock wall, and Roy had personally demonstrated how to drag your career back from the edge of death with one line of help from the Executive Officer — and all of that, out of Tobita's mouth, bought us exactly one word: passable.

"Accordingly, you should all receive decent marks on this term's final evaluation." He paused. Then delivered the last cut.

"Congratulations." Congratulations my ass. If the second half hadn't gone clean, we'd probably be vapor by now. Best case, they'd carve a few more names into the war memorial on the Capital Star. More realistic case: the Federal government decides our cause of death was too stupid to engrave, and quietly refuses to put our names up at all — just so future generations don't start asking uncomfortable questions about where the education budget actually went.

I stood there, deadpan, working through an entire administrative ruling on behalf of the Federal Memorial Management Office inside my own head. Beside me, Jess was vibrating at a genuinely dangerous frequency. She wasn't cold. She was about to lose her mind laughing.

The kind of shaking where you can't let a sound out, so your shoulders and the corners of your mouth do all the work instead — the kind that made me seriously worried she was going to short out like a broken comm unit: spark, smoke, then collapse on the bridge deck. Tobita clearly saw it. But he must have been in a decent mood today — or maybe the fact that we hadn't turned the Yukikaze into the dock's public joke had temporarily lowered his kill intent into a range that could tolerate student breathing.

So he let Jess go and kept talking.

"Additionally — starting this afternoon, you're all authorized three days' shore leave." The air on the bridge, which had felt bolted down for the entire session, shifted. Just slightly. But noticeably. Even I blanked for a second. Three days' shore leave. Out of Tobita's mouth, it didn't even sound like a leave notice. It sounded more like the military had decided to issue a group of people just fished out of a pressure cooker a seventy-two-hour limited-use freedom permit.

"If you're short on personal supplies, go restock," Tobita said.

"If you want something decent to eat, go find it yourselves." At that, he glanced deliberately in my direction. Precisely enough that I wanted to file a formal complaint on the spot.

"And of course," he added, tone unchanged, "if you'd like to use the time to date — to build relationships — that's permitted too." Jess started shaking harder. I was fairly sure that if she opened her mouth right now, what came out wouldn't be laughter. It'd be something between a distress signal and a mechanical failure. D sucked in a breath behind us, the way a man does when someone's just cracked open a truly spectacular box of gossip in front of him.

Harvey shot him one calm, flat look — the kind that says: laugh out loud in here, and I will personally make sure you take the bridge deck with you when you go collect your comm unit. As for me — Don't look at me. I was going ashore for soap, not to make a personal contribution to Federal population policy.... Although, thinking about it, there was something a little off about a system that enforced discipline tight enough to regulate footstep cadence, and yet barely reacted to cadets dating.

Then again — a hundred years of war. The Federation's demographic crater was probably deep enough to double as a topographic feature. Compared to banning cadet relationships, the government almost certainly preferred we grow up and hurry up about producing a few new citizens — the kind who could still pay taxes, wear the uniform, and, ideally, die somewhere a little more dignified.

Framed that way, Tobita's "permitted too" line suddenly lost whatever joke it had and picked up the shadow of a policy directive instead. Federal romance. Rooted, as always, in a spreadsheet. Tobita cleared his throat, dragging my unhealthy little sociological tangent back to the present.

"Those going ashore — collect your comm units from Security," he said.

"Return to ship by midnight, three days from now. If you're bad with time, or you're worried you'll forget, that's what the comm units are for." From any other instructor, that might have sounded like a reminder — maybe even a little care. From him, it landed more like: I've installed the last layer of idiot-proofing. Anyone who still manages to lose themselves after this has a personal quality problem.

"That's all." He lifted his hand off the chair back. His voice went light, almost offhand.

"Dismissed." The tension that had been strung tight across the bridge for the whole session let go the instant that word landed. Not cheering. Not chaos. Just the shell everyone had been wearing — I am a regulation-compliant cadet, suitable for documentary footage — cracking by exactly one layer, all at once. D was the first to let out a breath he'd apparently been holding for God knows how long.

"We made it out alive..."

"It's three days' leave," Evelyn said coldly.

"Not a pardon."

"Close enough for me."

"That's because your standards are too low," Harvey said. Jess had finally recovered enough to brace one hand on the edge of her console, still trembling.

"No," she said.

"I really can't. That 'build relationships' line of his — I could run on that for three days." I turned and glared at her.

"You'd better only laugh for three days."

"What, you scared I'll still be going on day four?"

"I'm scared you won't survive to day four."

"Wow. Harsh. Is this the warm comradely support of a cadet who just scored well?"

"One more word and I'm going straight to Security to request your comm unit get set to permanent silent mode." Jess narrowed her eyes, mouth curling at the corner, clearly still replaying Tobita's line on a loop for her own amusement. That expression was deeply irritating — especially since she hadn't even said anything yet, and I could already guess the three different versions of the joke lined up in her head. Maki stepped back from Roy's station, glancing once at the operation log still up on the bridge display.

"Let's go get our comm units," she said, flat. Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. Just that. No loaded follow-up. No working date or relationship back into it the way Jess would have. And yet — somehow — hearing it from her made me want to go back and cut Tobita's entire little speech out of the record. Which made no sense. And was extremely inconvenient. Roy still looked like he hadn't fully come down from docking.

Like the bridge procedures had wrung him dry, and he was currently holding himself together into a human shape through discipline alone. Lan had already saved off the comm logs. When she stood, her movements were as clean and efficient as ever. Her face stayed neutral, but I had a strong feeling that every time she thought back to Captain Oshima's little light signal, her disgust index ticked up a notch on its own.

"Security's going to have a line," Lan said.

"Which means the ship's still got a functioning survival instinct," Harvey replied.

"You make picking up a comm unit sound like drawing an escape-pod number," D complained.

"Close enough," Evelyn said. That one nearly got a laugh out of even me. Tobita didn't spare us another glance. He'd already gone back to some other file, as naturally as if the entire simulation, the docking, the scoring, and the shore leave announcement had just been a few forgettable line items on his to-do list. That kind of person is the most dangerous. Because to him, grinding someone's nerves down until they're almost transparent is just routine paperwork.

We started peeling off from our stations, one by one. I took one last look at the row of steady dock lights out front, then at Tobita's back, and a thought surfaced at a genuinely inappropriate moment. The core of Federal military education was probably this: push you until you're nearly dead, then — like tossing out a used tool — hand you three days off and let you go patch up your own mental state on your own time. Then expect you back, right on schedule, for the next round.

There's a certain institutional elegance to that. Also nothing human about it at all. I fell in behind the others, heading for the bridge exit, already fairly sure the walk to Security wasn't going to be a quiet one. After all, someone had just been officially cleared by Captain Tobita to build relationships. And I was surrounded by an entire shipload of people who were absolutely not going to let that go. The walk from the bridge to Security turned out louder than I'd expected. Not marketplace loud.

More like a group of people freshly hauled out of a pressure cooker, still maintaining the basic outline of a proper Federal cadet on the surface, while underneath, every nerve was firing in a different direction. Tobita's "permitted too" line had apparently hit with a yield comparable to an FTL jump — and judging by some of the reactions, the blast radius was even wider.

"Build relationships—" Jess dragged the tail of it out on purpose, mimicking Tobita's flat, affectless delivery. The effect was absurd enough to feel almost sacrilegious.

"So that's it, then. Turns out the ultimate goal of advanced Federal military education really is romantic freedom."

"Shut up," I said.

"I wasn't finished."

"Then close your mouth now and call it your contribution to national oxygen conservation." Jess clutched her chest, looking deeply wounded.

"Wow, Hoshino. Harsh. I'm just showing a little respect for the Federation's population policy."

"If you actually respected it, you wouldn't be smiling like you just found a crate of contraband."

"Those aren't mutually exclusive."

"They are."

"I don't think so."

"I do."

"That's tyranny."

"That's self-defense." Harvey, walking ahead, didn't even turn his head.

"If you two plan on running this argument all the way past the dock gate, I'd suggest requesting a dedicated channel on your comm units first. Keep it off the public band."

"See," Jess said, immediately turning it on me, "even Harvey thinks you're loud."

"He thinks we're both loud," I said.

"But I sound better."

"That sentence was noise." D was laughing so hard beside us he nearly walked face-first into the corridor's corner padding.

"Shit," he gasped, bracing a hand against the wall.

"I knew it'd end up like this before leave. That line from Tobita was like tossing a flare into a fuel drum."

"You're laughing that loud because you want the whole ship to know you've got nothing to do?" Evelyn asked, cold as ever. D immediately cut his volume in half. He still couldn't quite stop.

"I just think — hell, that was brutal. One second we're docking, the next it's open season on feelings. Does Federal military education really need that much range?"

"It's not open season on feelings," Aida corrected from the side, precise as someone fixing a formatting error in a report.

"It's more accurately described as permitted emotional exchange under limited conditions." D looked at her.

"... That how they phrase it in the Upper House?"

"That's how normal people phrase it."

"No. Yours sounds more like a policy document than Tobita did." Aida's eyebrow ticked up slightly — clearly filing that remark under low-quality commentary, no response required. Lan walked on the other side, taking no part in any of this. She just moved forward, steps even, shoulders square — the kind of posture she'd keep whether she was walking to Security for a comm unit or taking over logistics at some collapsing forward garrison. Even so, I could tell she wasn't in a good mood.

More precisely: every time she thought back to Captain Chikuma's light signal from earlier, her expression cooled by a fraction. I glanced sideways at her.

"Still annoyed about the Boy Scout line?" Lan didn't even slow down. She just answered, flat.

"I was wondering whether the comm logs should have a dedicated category for transmissions with zero informational value that exist purely to waste everyone's time."

"There is one," Harvey said.

"It's called trash."

"Is that a technical classification or an emotional one?" Jess asked.

"Both," Lan said. Beautiful. Clean. Short. And exactly the right amount of poison. Roy walked a little ahead, still looking like the docking procedure had wrung him dry and left him holding his own shape together through discipline alone. On the surface he looked fine. Look twice, and you could tell he hadn't fully detached from that very public near-disaster. D drifted over and elbowed him.

"So, helmsman. First thing on the three-day list — find a chair and swear off steering wheels for life?" Roy was quiet for half a second.

"First thing's probably sleep."

"God, that's bleak."

"What else would it be?"

"At least say you're going to eat something enormous, or drink yourself into a blackout somewhere. That's what being young is supposed to look like."

"I don't want to black out," Roy said, perfectly earnest.

"I want to remember not to overcorrect next time." D burst out laughing on the spot.

"That's it. He's done. Tobita's already trained him into a self-correcting life-form." Maki, walking just behind Roy's right shoulder, added it flatly, without missing a beat.

"He'll live longer that way."

"... Yes, ma'am," Roy answered at once. Pure reflex. Practically Pavlovian. Jess dropped her voice beside me.

"I'm actually starting to feel a little sorry for him."

"You have something called sympathy?"

"Occasionally. Usually lasts about three seconds."

"How many seconds left?"

"Just ran out." I was about to hit her with an of course it did when the sign for Security showed up at the end of the corridor. The entrance was quieter than I'd expected. No line. No crowd of cadets bottlenecked outside. Not even the noise you'd expect from people who'd just been told they were finally free. The whole front area of Security sat in a silence so complete it felt hollow — lights stark white, metal desktops wiped clean in a way that looked fundamentally incompatible with anything joyful.

Probably because we'd spent the entire walk here arguing and burned straight through the peak rush hour. Which meant that right now — Sergeant Major Takenaka was standing there, watching us. One look, and the whole group snapped upright and went dead silent, almost in unison — like someone had hit an all-hands mute switch. I wasn't even sure that counted as discipline anymore. It felt more like a species-level survival instinct. Sergeant Major Takenaka seemed entirely satisfied with the result. He didn't smile.

But the look on his face — watching a group of cadets who'd sounded like someone had let a troop of monkeys loose in the hold five minutes ago, now suddenly tame enough for a recruitment brochure — carried its own quiet message: Good. At least you still remember how to be afraid. He had a box of comm units tucked under one arm. They looked like wristwatches, only thicker, harder — clearly not built for counting steps or tracking heart rate.

Built for tracking people like us: released for three days on the theory we'd remember to come back on our own, and practically speaking, might just as easily die of stupidity in some back alley. Takenaka set the box down on the desk. Then started handing them out, one at a time, like passing out rations.

"Take it."

"Yes, sir."

"Next."

"Yes, sir." When it was my turn, I took the unit. Heavier than it looked. The metal casing was cold against my palm, as if it wanted to make one thing clear up front: Don't get it twisted. This isn't freedom. This is loose supervision with a built-in leash. Takenaka waited until everyone had one before he spoke.

"Rules first." His voice wasn't loud, but in the overdone quiet of Security, every word came through razor-clear.

"Back aboard before midnight, three days from now."

"Don't make me come find you." He paused.

"And don't make Civil Security call me to come collect you." His expression didn't move. His tone didn't move. He kept even the standard senior-NCO pressure line pinned at a flat, level baseline. Which was exactly why the next line hit as hard as it did.

"If either of those happens," he said, "I guarantee you will die badly." Right. So somewhere in Federal military history, a few cadets on three-day leave had clearly managed something spectacular enough to leave the entire Security section with genuine PTSD. Nothing else explains why Takenaka delivered that line like he was reciting case-file numbers. D obviously wanted to laugh. He swallowed it. Progress.

Or, more accurately, basic survival wisdom — the kind you finally develop after getting worked over by Major Kirishima and Captain Tobita back to back. Takenaka kept going.

"Once you're off the ship, stay off until the three days are up." He tapped the desk once, steady rhythm.

"Come back early, even for a minute, and you don't get to go out again."

"So if there's anything you need from your quarters, go get it now." The moment he said it, whatever looseness had crept back into the air snapped shut into something closer to standard procedure. Fair enough. The military handing you freedom never once meant a second chance to get it right. The door opens once. Whether you remember to bring your brain out with you is your own problem. Then Takenaka reached to the side and slapped a printed sheet down on the desk.

It looked, disturbingly, like a resort recommendation list. I stared at it for two seconds, half-convinced Security was secretly running a side business as a tourism office.

"The garrison's got dormitory space," Takenaka said.

"Use it over the next three days if you need it." He tacked on two more words.

"Free of charge." Jess's head came right up.

"Not mandatory housing?"

"Correct," Takenaka said. Jess blinked, looking faintly startled that the Federal military had produced an arrangement that sounded like it came from an actual human being.

"That's rare."

"That's because you're young," Harvey said under his breath.

"You haven't learned yet what usually hides behind the word free."

"Such as?"

"Such as the location's probably garbage."

"Thanks. Very encouraging." Takenaka gave no sign he'd heard a word of it. He cleared his throat and dropped his voice slightly.

"One more thing." Everyone at the desk looked up. He had the air of a man about to hand down the kind of advice that could never go in a manual, but absolutely had to be passed on by word of mouth if anyone was going to survive it.

"That casino by the station is trash," Takenaka said. Security went dead silent for a beat.

"I don't recommend it." Christ. I nearly lost it completely. What the hell was that. One second: nation, discipline, Civil Security, ugly deaths. The next: an unsolicited veteran's guide to which local establishments to avoid, delivered in the exact same flat register, same face. The tonal whiplash was so clean it hit harder than any actual joke could've. D's shoulders were shaking outright. Jess had her face buried in the back of her hand, in open combat with the laugh trying to fight its way out.

Lan stood perfectly straight, expression unmoved, but I'd bet money something in her head had briefly seized up. Even Aida blinked, once, very slightly — the look of someone trying to file military personnel offering unsolicited casino reviews into a folder she hadn't previously allocated space for. Takenaka clearly didn't think any of that was funny. Or he knew, and simply didn't care. He brought his volume back up.

"Last thing." Two words, and everyone swallowed their laughter whole.

"For the next three days, out there, you represent the Federal military."

"Don't embarrass the country." There it was. Back on script. Proper, regulation-grade sign-off. Then Takenaka delivered the line that actually finished the job.

"And before you come back aboard — whatever men-and-women entanglements you get up to out there, don't bring them back onto this ship." All right. I take back everything I just thought. That was, without question, both the most standard and the least standard closing line I've heard out of a Federal officer today. This time D actually bit down on his own lip. Jess turned her head away entirely, shoulders going in a full-body shudder.

If Takenaka hadn't still been standing right in front of us, I had zero doubt this group would already be boiling Captain Tobita, three-day leave, build relationships, the docking helmsman, and Federal population policy down into a single pot.

"That's all." Takenaka swept a look over us.

"Get lost." Perfect. Clean, no wasted words, and even a trace of something that — by military standards — almost counted as warmth. The kind that says: I've said what I have to say. Whatever happens next is on you. We were just starting to scatter when I caught movement at the edge of my vision — a very small kid sprinting past at the far end of the corridor, uniform a size smaller than ours, moving fast enough to qualify as a miniature disaster event. I asked without thinking.

"The Junior Division doesn't disembark?" Takenaka turned and looked at me. His expression was sincere to the point of looking genuinely pained.

"Cadet Hoshino," he said.

"If you'd successfully locked a demon away, would you go and let it back out?" I was quiet for a second.

"... Understood." Very much understood. Some Federal regulations, clearly, weren't built on institutional logic at all. They were built on the accumulated blood and tears of everyone who came before us.