Chương 226: 88. Practical Evaluation 1

From the moment we stepped back into the training area, the afternoon Security Division practical radiated a very specific kind of sincerity: the morning was just the appetizer — now they're actually going to kill us. If the morning's written exam had been Sergeant Takenaka strangling us spiritually with paper, the afternoon was him swapping that out for the more traditional, physically virtuous, Federal-military-approved version of the same thing.

The automatic doors slid open, and the endless rows of modular walls inside were enough to make my stomach cramp on sight. The wide practice deck had been completely chopped up into a replica of shipboard corridors. Narrow passages, ninety-degree blind corners, low ceilings, half-open pressure doors, warning strobes rigged to flicker on purpose, and a few stretches of floor tilted at a shallow angle — a deliberate simulation of a hull losing attitude control after a hit.

Sensor plates were embedded in the walls, cameras studded the ceiling, and training dummies in standard enemy armor stood tucked into the corners, standing exactly the way ghosts stand. I took one look around and quietly held a moment of silence for my afternoon.

"Now this is more like it." D stood at the front, craning left and right with the enthusiasm of someone checking out a new theme-park attraction. Harvey let out a dry laugh beside him.

"You're genuinely unwell."

"Don't say that." D turned back, expression surprisingly serious.

"This isn't unwell. This is proactive adaptation to a hostile environment." Lan cut in from behind, flat as ever.

"Proactive adaptation doesn't usually include volunteering to walk into an accident site."

"Wrong." D raised one finger, gearing up for a speech nobody had asked for.

"True elites find their stage inside the accident site."

"Try surviving to the curtain call first," Jess said, tucking her helmet under one arm, and dismissed him with a sound that wasn't quite a laugh. I was about to add something of my own when Sergeant Takenaka came in through the side door, a collapsible pointer in hand. The second that thing settled into his grip, it stopped looking like a teaching tool and started looking like something designed to tap ideas directly into people's skulls until they exploded.

"Good. Looks like the written exam this morning didn't scare you completely mute." Takenaka stepped up to the projection screen and hit a button. A full structural diagram of the modular deck lit the wall.

"Then let's get back to the point." He tapped the three-dimensional schematic with the pointer.

"Shipboard breach and counter-breach. It was never about who hits harder. There are only two things that actually matter. One — who knows where they are. Two — who can know where they are, and still keep their teammates alive following them."

"Sergeant." D raised his hand.

"What if it's neither?" Takenaka looked at him.

"Then it plays out exactly like your answer on question six, part two, this morning. First, you revoke your own right to stand in the front row." The room laughed, brief and real. D clutched his chest like an old wound had just been struck. Takenaka ignored him and kept going.

"Today isn't the formal assessment. This is pre-drill training. You're not here to learn heroic charges. You're here to learn how not to slam into each other like a herd of rutting goats in a shithole like this. Entry order, corner sightlines, shield angles, cross-cover, casualty drag, hatch breaching, node defense, comm shorthand — you'll touch all of it today. Starting tomorrow, anyone who still exposes their back to a hostile in a corridor writes out the mistake. Thirty times."

Somehow that last threat sounded worse than actual enemy fire. Takenaka had us change into stripped-down training armor first, then handed out low-output marker rifles, practice axes, and anti-beam shields. The combination had a very specific Federal flavor of black humor — the same institution that could simulate deep-space combat was also dead serious about teaching you to survive a corridor fight with an axe. I was locking my shield onto my left arm when Maki, standing beside me, glanced over.

"Upper strap's too loose."

"Is it?"

"It is. You'll wobble the second you take a corner." I looked down. Before I could adjust it myself, Maki had already reached over and pulled the buckle in one notch, fingers moving like she was correcting a stubborn piece of machinery. When her fingertips brushed the edge of my arm plating, my whole body went still for half a second, for no logical reason at all.... It was nothing. A purely practical correction. But when Maki does it, it's never quite easy to believe that.

"Done," Maki said, pulling her hand back. Same flat tone as if she'd just closed a drawer.

"... Oh." That was the only syllable I managed. Then I felt the stare from over my left shoulder. I didn't need to check to know it was Jess. Sure enough, a beat later, Jess let out a short, sharp sound through her nose and snapped her own shield into place.

"Very thorough equipment check." D stuck his head in from the side, exactly as suicidal as usual.

"Well, this side runs the refined program. Not like your school of thought — where gear check just means 'if it cuts, it's fine.'" Jess raised an eyebrow.

"Trying to die once before the formal drill even starts?"

"No. I'm just very invested in atmosphere management today."

"That's not atmosphere management," Lan said from behind, flat.

"That's arson."

"Thank you. I accept that as a professional evaluation." Sergeant Takenaka rapped the pointer against the wall.

"Quiet. First item. Corridor entry." Corridor entry, stripped down, is the art of deciding — inside one doorway, one corner, a two-second gap in sightline — whether you walk out or get carried out. Takenaka demonstrated it himself first. One man, one shield, one axe, one low-output marker rifle. Advance, hug the wall, pressure-step, check the angle, shield leads, eyes follow. The whole sequence was so clean it didn't look like a person walking — it looked like the security manual had grown its own limbs.

He wasn't even moving fast, but every angle locked down with a steadiness that made your skin crawl. No flash. No performance. Just the specific, bone-deep competence of someone who's done this enough times that not dying has become a reflex.

"Understood?" Nobody said no. Because even if you genuinely didn't understand, you weren't about to admit it right now. Takenaka cut that option off anyway.

"Understanding it is one thing. Doing it is another. D. Out here. You're leading the first group." This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. Silence for a beat. Then every head in the room swiveled toward D in unison. D himself blinked.

"... Me?"

"Unless I was calling for a standard Mark-6 combat axe."

"No, I'm just confirming," D said, pointing at himself, expression somewhere between stunned and flattered.

"This is really my stage today?" Takenaka made a short sound.

"You talk too much, your feet are fast, and your eyes wander — but they wander with some value. In a place like this, you go first. Cut the commentary in half and your performance probably improves." Watching D's face light up, I suddenly understood something. He wasn't incapable. He just defaulted to the mode that made everyone forget: in genuine chaos, D had a monster's instinct for adaptation.

"Hear that?" D spun around, glowing like he'd just been handed a temporary field commission.

"Instructor-certified. Loud, but valuable."

"Survive the first corner before you brag," Harvey said. D snorted, hefted his shield in one hand and the marker rifle in the other, and stepped up to the start point. Takenaka switched the corridor module to red-alert mode. The lights dropped instantly, and a low warning tone began to cycle. What had been a training room a few seconds ago turned, all at once, into exactly the kind of shipboard disaster site I hate most.

"Begin." D moved. His first step was solid. Not the joking, fake-steady thing from the morning — his actual center of gravity dropped. Shield out half a frame, feet tracking the wall, eyes sweeping the upper edge of the corner first, then dropping to waist height. At the first T-junction he paused half a beat, feinted the muzzle left, then cut hard right. A second later, an enemy dummy popped out on the right. D raised the rifle. Two marker rounds landed dead center on the chest sensor.

"Hit." The mechanical voice rang out, and everyone blinked. Even Takenaka's eyebrows moved, just barely. D was pleased, but not pleased enough to lose his head. He advanced two more steps, then raised a hand and dropped his voice.

"If this were a real ship, someone could hide in the ceiling panel on the left. Roy — where you were just standing, you'd be first to die." Roy protested immediately from the back.

"You're supposed to be demonstrating. Why are you cursing me on the way?"

"Not a curse. A forecast. The battlefield is very honest." The words were barely out of D's mouth before the ceiling panel actually flipped open and dropped a second dummy. D was half a beat slow. The marker beam grazed his shoulder plate.

"Light injury." The mechanical voice delivered the verdict without a shred of feeling. Jess laughed outright from the back.

"Shot the second you finished bragging. Your stage didn't last long."

"That's demonstrating the margin for error!" D said, stepping back to reset his shield angle, unrepentant.

"I left you all an educational case study, on purpose!" Takenaka, this time, didn't reprimand him. He just said, flat:"Case studies are useful. Preferably ones that don't use your own shoulder as the material." D finished the whole corridor anyway, even catching a sensor trap in front of the second door. He never stopped talking, and nearly got clipped twice because he couldn't resist critiquing the dummy placement out loud — but his overall completion rate was disturbingly high.

By the time he backed out to the start line, Harvey was looking at him differently.

"... You actually know what you're doing." D pushed his visor up, wearing the expression of a man whose greatness had simply gone unrecognized until now.

"I've always said — ugly close-range work, that's my specialty."

"That is not a sentence you can use in any normal social setting," Aida said. I didn't laugh for long. Because for the next pair, Takenaka called out —"Hoshino. Maki." My stomach dropped. Beside me, Jess snapped her visor down with a hard crack. It did not sound friendly. D, meanwhile, lit up like a shark that had caught the scent of blood.

"Oh — this group's going to be a show."

"Shut up," I said.

"I can shut up. The crowd's expectations won't disappear."

"You are so punchable right now."

"Thank you. I've received a lot of positive feedback today." Two-person entry is worse than solo in one specific way: you're not just managing yourself, you're managing someone else's rhythm too. Who goes through first, shield height, who takes which corner, who covers high and who covers low — miss it by one beat and you collide, miss it by two and you both go down together. I took the left. Maki took the right. Takenaka said only, "Standard procedure," and stepped back without another word.

I was about to confirm the rhythm when Maki just glanced at me, once.

"I'll count three. You follow."

"... You decided that pretty naturally."

"What else would I do?"

"You could at least ask my opinion." Maki paused half a second.

"Do you have a faster plan than that?"

"... No."

"Then listen to me." D laughed out loud from behind us.

"Wow. That's a very firm command style." Jess cut in, cold.

"Do you have too much free time?"

"I'm a tactical observer."

"You're a spectator who enjoys watching things burn." I wanted to turn around and join in on tearing D apart, but Maki had already raised her hand. Three. Two. One. In. The instant my foot crossed the threshold, I understood that Maki's "listen to me" hadn't been posturing. The rhythm was too steady to fight. So steady my body just followed without waiting for my brain to weigh in. Maki's shield angle pinned down the forward sightline first; I cut the lower left, muzzle sweeping the dead ground.

At the corner, her shoulder line yielded exactly half a step, and I slid into the second field of view. The first dummy popped — I put two rounds into the sensor plate almost before I'd registered deciding to. Before I could catch a breath, Maki had already wedged her shield into the second half-open pressure door.

"Upper right," Maki said.

"Got it." I raised the rifle and fired.

"Hit."

"... Huh." D's muffled commentary drifted up from behind.

"Is that sync rate a little disgusting, or is it just me?"

"Shut up," Jess said, very fast. But this time, what I heard under that "shut up" wasn't just annoyance at the noise. There was something else. Something clearly unhappy. Not because D was loud. Because D had said something accurate that she didn't want acknowledged. We pushed through two more segments. At the third corner I nearly collided with Maki — she just reached out, caught my shoulder, pulled me back half a step, and took the angle herself, shield first. A dummy swung out from the side.

The marker beam grazed the edge of Maki's shield. If she hadn't pulled me back that half-step, I'd have been the one it hit. My heart did something extremely undignified against my ribs. Maki glanced back at me.

"Don't rush." I opened my mouth and managed exactly one word.

"... Yeah."

"Your head went first. Your feet hadn't caught up."

"You can even tell exactly how I'm being stupid now?"

"It's obvious."

"You are seriously not cute when you talk, you know that?"

"I'm not here to be cute." D started up again from the back.

"I said drill together — not speed-date! Shoot something!" The entire corridor went dead silent for a beat. I nearly lost my footing. Maki didn't even turn her head. Her muzzle stayed perfectly level, as if the words hadn't made it through her visor at all. Jess's laugh, though, came through very clearly. Not the short, clipped sound from before. The kind of laugh that comes when you've finally been handed a legitimate excuse to mock someone.

"D, I'm with you on that one."

"Thank you," D said, delighted.

"Cross-faction understanding. Rare and beautiful."

"Don't get used to it," Jess said.

"I just think you happened not to be wrong, for once." My face was warm under the visor. Thank God the visor was still down. Worse — D had no intention of stopping there. By the final narrow stretch, we had to handle two simultaneous dummy targets, left and right. Maki locked down the centerline; I had to press in close and borrow the face of her shield to cut my angle. The distance closed until our shields were nearly touching, and inside the sealed air of my visor, my own breath had started fogging the lens.

D actually started clapping from behind.

"You two fight like a married couple working through a midlife crisis!"

"D." I said it through my teeth.

"Present."

"Next time it's your turn, I'm going to pray for two extra bodies to drop out of the ceiling and land directly on your head."

"Is that a marriage curse?"

"Shut up!" Jess and I yelled it at exactly the same time. Harvey was laughing hard enough to crouch. Roy had his face in his hands, wearing the expression of a man seriously considering a transfer request. A vein twitched at Takenaka's temple, but he still didn't cut in — just scribbled something fast on his board. Judging by his face, I genuinely couldn't tell whether he was logging tactical errors or adding ten more pages to whatever lecture D had coming. At the last hatch, Maki signaled for me to go first.

I blinked.

"Me, this time?"

"Yes. You've got the rhythm now." I held her gaze for half a second, then nodded. This time I led the entry. Hug the door. Pressure-step. Check the angle. In. One dummy low, one behind the door. I took the first; Maki finished the second. The whole sequence closed clean — clean enough that the system voice gave us something extra:"Dual-entry evaluation: Excellent." The room erupted behind us. D was the first to speak, loud enough to summon the entire Security Division.

"Alright, alright, one more room and you two are going to end up kissing —""D." This time it was Takenaka. His tone was flat. Flat enough the temperature in the training deck seemed to drop three degrees on the spot. D snapped to attention.

"Here."

"One thing in your tactical observation just now was correct."

"... Which part?"

"You really are very good at fanning the flames." The room held for one second. Then the first one to laugh was D himself. Not his usual clowning laugh. The laugh of a man caught red-handed and choosing to own it.

"Fair," D said, both hands raised, expression sincere in a way that was deeply suspicious.

"I admit my on-site management leaned a little too heavily toward entertainment value just now." Jess leaned back against the wall, shoulders shaking with laughter.

"You actually know how to admit fault."

"I always have. I just rarely get the chance."

"That sentence is somehow even more punchable than everything else you said."

"Thank you." I pushed my visor up, finally able to breathe normally — and looked straight into Jess's eyes. She wasn't laughing anymore. Or rather, the smile was still there, but what sat underneath it had changed. Not the easy, watching-the-show amusement from a second ago. More like — assessment. Confirmation. A grudging acknowledgment of something she hadn't wanted to have confirmed. Then she tipped her chin at me.

"Don't stand too far back in the real drill."

"Why?"

"So nobody has to watch Maki drag you along again while you forget you're capable of moving first."... Oh. That was extremely Jess. Provocation on the surface. Something else entirely underneath. I hadn't worked out how to answer when Maki, already unclipping her shield, added, flat and even:"Hoshino's first entry angle just now was correct." Jess's eyes went cold.

"I never said it wasn't."

"You weren't talking about technique." The air snagged. D stood off to the side, eyes bright, watching us like two warships lining up for a collision he was thoroughly enjoying.

"Oh-ho —""Say one more word," I said, turning to glare at him, "and I will personally use you as the casualty-drag demonstration."

"... Understood." D mimed zipping his mouth shut, reading the room with rare accuracy.

"Muted for the rest of the day." Takenaka had apparently seen enough of the show — or enough of the eleven of us dismantling each other emotionally. The pointer came down against the wall.

"Fall in. Pre-drill training ends here. Formal exercise groupings, now."