Chương 255: 103. Helplessness Under War 2

We ended up at a steakhouse. That's what the sign claimed, anyway. Whether steakhouse came with an invisible subtitle reading specializing in freshly disembarked cadets, I had no way of confirming yet. That's the thing about spending too long on a warship — your sense of time breaks down, and your sense of money evaporates right along with it. Every day, you're either eating standardized rations or watching missiles worth an entire apartment block climb out of their launch cells.

Sooner or later, fifty credits and five thousand credits both start to look equally theoretical. So I stood at the door, looked up at the aggressively respectable wooden sign, looked down at the specials board, and arrived at a thoroughly irresponsible conclusion.

"... Probably not expensive."

"When you say it in that tone," Maki said beside me, perfectly calm, "it usually means regret's coming."

"No, this is high-risk battlefield assessment."

"Is it."

"Yes. This time the incoming fire happens to be prices." Maki gave me a look, said nothing more, and pushed the door open. I followed. Inside was considerably more respectable than the exterior suggested. Clean floors. Air thick with butter, meat drippings, black pepper, fresh bread. Faded photographs on the walls — some in Federal uniforms, some in old Imperial cuts, a few impossible to place either way. The kind of establishment that had long since stopped keeping track of which flag was flying.

As long as the tables stayed in one piece, business went on. We took a table against the wall. I opened the menu and conducted a serious tactical evaluation. This cut looked good. This price looked good in a way that was slightly suspicious. This combo came with soup, bread, and a drink — suspicious enough to make me wonder if the owner planned to make up the margin in the dessert. I ordered the safest sirloin set on the menu.

Maki ordered faster than I did, like she wasn't placing a food order so much as approving a supply requisition. When the water and barley tea arrived, I noticed a wooden plaque on the wall — one line each in standard Federal and Imperial script: This establishment accepts Federal credits, Imperial marks, and universal e-pay. I stared at it for two seconds, then looked over at the owner, who was polishing a glass behind the counter.

"You actually take Imperial marks here?" He looked up, wearing the expression of a man watching a city kid finally figure out that fish know how to swim.

"Of course," he said, still wiping.

"Whoever comes through, life goes on." He said it flat, the way you'd mention the weather, or whether tomorrow's soup might run salty. But that exact flatness felt like the true base color of a place like this. He tipped his chin toward the window.

"We're close enough to the Empire's Hohenzollern Fortress that they occupy us whenever they feel like it. Few weeks, few months, the Federation takes it back. Give it a while, maybe it flips again. Round and round." I held my water glass and suddenly wasn't sure I should drink from it. Some places measure a life in degrees, salaries, marriages. Some places measure it in which flag's flying this week. This steakhouse clearly belonged to the second category.

The owner's eyes swept over our jackets — one practiced glance, like an old trader appraising stock — and had us pegged in two seconds.

"Cadets?"

"Yeah," I said.

"Which ship?"

"The Yukikaze." He actually smiled at that. Not a polite smile, not a customer-service smile — the kind that says oh, you're from that ship.

"You two are lucky."

"How so?"

"How so?" He set the glass down, smile widening.

"That's the lucky Yukikaze, that's how." My eyebrow went up. That had the shape of a legend starting. And border legends, in my experience, ran about one part fact, one part alcohol, and one part too many people have died, so we need a reason to keep going.

"She went out with the Federal fleet against Hohenzollern eleven times. Came back without a scratch, ten of those." I blinked, glancing at Maki on instinct. This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there. She didn't react much. Just lifted her glass and took a quiet sip, the expression of someone listening to a report she'd already read but still had to sign off on. Then she spoke.

"And the other time?" The owner looked like he'd been waiting exactly for that question.

"The other time, she was stuck in a major refit before departure. Missed the main force entirely."

"A refit?"

"That's right." He nodded, dead serious.

"Heard the toilets were broken." I nearly sprayed barley tea across the table. Genuinely nearly did. I coughed twice, got the glass down fast, and held onto whatever dignity I had left by a thread. Maki glanced at me — a flicker of amusement, faint but real, crossing her eyes. I wiped my mouth, trying to process it. A Federal fleet gets ground to dust on the front line. The Yukikaze survives because the toilets were out of order.... So sometimes luck really is a form of military capability.

The most unreasonable kind there is.

"Things haven't been too quiet around here lately either," the owner added, like he'd just finished telling his favorite old joke and remembered, a beat too late, that reality wasn't actually funny. He reached over and patted an old radio on the counter.

"This thing keeps losing signal. Every time it does that, it usually means the Imperial forces are about due." I followed his gaze. The radio looked properly ancient — antenna bent to one side, paint chipping around the speaker grille. But in a place like this, that made it more trustworthy than newer equipment. It had lived through enough occupations and counter-occupations to know what it was hearing. Our food arrived.

The iron plates hissed, steam still rising off the meat, the smell of black pepper sauce pushing half the frontier unease right back down. Maki picked up her knife and fork and started cutting with the precision of someone field-stripping delicate hardware.

"Signal interference," she said quietly, working through the first piece.

"You mean the Empire?"

"Not necessarily." She put the cut piece in her mouth, chewed, swallowed, then continued.

"But in a zone like this, losing signal usually isn't coincidence. Especially when the old equipment glitches before the new stuff does." I watched her for a couple of seconds.

"You analyzing tactical conditions between bites really doesn't read like fifteen."

"Neither do you."

"Thanks. I'll take that as a compliment."

"It wasn't meant as one."

"Rude." She didn't bother responding. The owner, seeing us start eating, had the good sense to leave off the storytelling and go check on another table. Elsewhere in the room: a few workers just off shift, a couple who looked like merchant crew, and in the corner, two people in plain clothes who read as ex-military regardless. Standard Federal, local dialect, the occasional line of Imperial — all of it simmering together into a small, border-town-specific broth.

I cut a piece of steak, took a bite, and found it was actually good. Not revelatory. Solid. The kind of good that reminds you eating isn't only about staying alive — it can be a plain, ordinary comfort too. That feeling was a little dangerous. Comfort makes you soft. Soft means things you shouldn't be thinking about start finding their way in. For instance — where we were sleeping tonight. I was halfway through my second piece when the comm unit on my wrist lit up. A message from Jess.

I opened it, read one line, and felt my face twist on its own. Short version: the tatami in the free garrison dorm had gone moldy, the bathroom looked like the opening scene of a bargain-bin horror film, and if I dared sleep there, I'd probably see a second version of myself in the mirror by morning. I closed the message and quietly let go of the last of my hope regarding "free" Federal housing. Maki set down her cutlery and looked up at me.

"Shimo."

"Yeah?" She paused. Just that — short, unreasonably short, but enough to put me automatically on guard. When Maki paused mid-sentence, it never meant she'd lost her words. It meant whatever came next was probably going to do something to my heart rate.

"Tonight—" I cut in almost on reflex.

"Let's be clear, I'm not staying in the dorm." Maki looked at me, not particularly surprised I'd jumped in that fast. I held up the comm unit.

"Jess just sent word. Moldy tatami, horror-set bathroom. Places like that are either haunted or worse than haunted." Maki nodded.

"Then... I'll arrange it?" She said it very evenly. Too evenly. Evenly enough that I almost missed the impact of the sentence entirely. I looked up at her.

"Sure." I answered faster than I meant to. Fast enough that a more responsible version of me would've dragged that answer back in for review. Maki didn't react. She just gave a quiet "Mm," like confirming a form that had cleared approval. Then she added:"After we finish, we're going to the department store." I blinked.

"You still need something?"

"Not me." Maki looked at me. The look wasn't heavy, wasn't sharp — but it carried the distinct sensation of having just been scanned head to toe, socks included, and already filed. She finished the sentence.

"You."

"Huh?" I don't usually make sounds that empty. But in that moment, it was genuinely all I had. Maki's gaze dropped a fraction — cuffs, collar — then came back up to my face.

"Toiletries. Clean underwear. A few other basics. You're short on all of it." I stared at her. She stared back. The lighting in the restaurant was completely normal. My ears started heating up anyway.

"... How do you even know what I'm short on?"

"Observation."

"That's a slightly thorough level of observation."

"It's fine."

"How is that fine?"

"At least I didn't announce it to the whole restaurant."

"You're not being especially discreet about it right now either." Maki cut another piece of steak, her voice level to the point of cruelty.

"If you'd rather shop alone, I don't mind." It sounded like a choice. But I knew this kind of choice. It was the same as Tobita's please make use of your comm units — phrased as a suggestion, already decided underneath. I looked down at the steak I'd cut into something fairly tragic, and felt something shift — not quite shame, not quite embarrassment. More like realizing that outside the bridge, outside training, outside every institutional command chain, someone had quietly, naturally factored me into her plans.

Not as an afterthought. Not out of politeness. Deliberately. That was harder to deflect than any spoken kindness could ever be. I stabbed my fork into the meat and used chewing as cover for the pause I couldn't quite hide.

"... Fine. Let's go." Maki looked at me like she'd already known that was coming.

"Mm." I added one more line, trying to claw back some scrap of control.

"But if you try to pick out anything weird for me, I'm walking."

"I know."

"You know, and you're still this calm?"

"Because you won't actually leave." Her voice was quiet when she said it. Light enough to pass for a joke. But somehow, that wasn't what I heard underneath it. Not an order. Not teasing. More like a verdict already reached some time ago. I stayed quiet for two seconds, then gave up and drank the barley tea. Cold. Didn't do a thing for the heat in my ears. Outside, the port lights kept coming on layer by layer.

Street noise, traffic, the far-off hum of the transit line — all of it blending together, like the whole frontline city was finally exhaling into the night. And I sat there — Maki across the table, steak and barley tea between us, Jess's unread message still sitting on my wrist — with exactly one thought occupying the part of my brain that should've been doing something more useful. We were going to the department store next. And Maki was taking me....

If the Federation doesn't end up getting killed by the Empire, there's a real chance it goes down to situations exactly this stupid first. At the very least, right now, I wasn't exactly modeling long-term institutional resilience.