Chương 250: 100. Faster-Than-Light Travel

Tobita moved first. He didn't shout "all hands, stations," or reach for some polished line worthy of a plaque in the Academy's history hall. He just pulled a slim authorization card from his uniform's inner pocket, and with his other hand, flipped open the protective cover on the side of the main console. Click. Not loud. Somehow it landed harder than any alarm.

"Watch closely," Tobita said. He slid the card into the main control slot, then fed in a short metal key. Half a turn, and something deep in the lock mechanism settled with a low, solid thunk. The next instant, every secondary screen on the bridge refreshed in sync. My tactical panel lit up too. The line that had been sitting reassuringly in the corner, as comforting as a seatbelt on a school bus, flickered once. [SIMULATION → LIVE] A second line appeared right under it.

[SAFETY → DISENGAGED] I stared at those two lines, and my first thought was: so that copy of Bridge Operations I nearly killed myself memorizing last night wasn't just Tobita's personal sleep-deprivation device. We were actually going to use it. My second thought had a lot less dignity to it. We're done. Not the metaphorical kind of done. The kind where, a few days ago, I was deciding which shelf under the bunk to hide cherry cola on, and today I'm responsible for arming a warship.

When life changes direction that fast, a person doesn't grow. She just gets dizzy.

"Effective immediately, the bridge is operating under live combat readiness," Tobita said, pulling his hand back from the authorization panel, voice as flat as if he'd just announced dinner had switched to a tougher ration bread.

"Anyone makes a mistake like a student, I'll deal with her like a student." Very Tobita. It didn't sound like a threat. It was worse than one — because we already were students, and he'd clearly found a way to make "student" its own category under criminal law.

"Roy. Take the helm."

"Copy." Roy moved back to the forward-right helm station, hands finding the wheel and the throttle box. Whatever trace of I'm just running a drill looseness had been in his shoulders yesterday was gone completely today. He stood solid — the kind of solid where even the nerves had been bolted straight into the bone.

"Lan. Open external route comms. Passive receive, priority."

"Copy."

"Akari. Cross-check radar against thermal. Begin long-range sweep."

"Copy." Akari's voice is always crisp. Yesterday, watching her slide into what used to be Lieutenant Manny's seat, I'd thought it looked a little like a kid sneaking into an adult's chair. Today it didn't look like sneaking anymore. It looked like the chair had finally found someone who wouldn't spill coffee across the panel.

"Jess. Tactical support."

"Oh, finally — something that isn't just my mouth." Same lethal tone as always. Her hands, though, moved fast. She split the left-side data feed into three tagged layers — route, threat picture, fire-control windows — and had it organized cleaner than some grown officers manage. Which was annoying, because I had to admit she looks genuinely good when she's actually working. Not decorative-good. Blade-just-drawn good — thin enough to cut air. I dragged my eyes back to my own board. Can't keep watching.

Keep watching, and this stops being yuri and starts being an incident report.

"Maki Kushima. XO station."

"Understood," Maki said. She walked over and settled half a step behind and to Roy's right, spine straight, positioned exactly where she could see the main viewport, the helm, and the bridge center all at once. That position doesn't belong to soft people. Stripped down, an Executive Officer's whole job is deciding what needs to burn before the Captain even has time to get angry about it.

Watching her take that spot gave me an odd, unreasonable calm — like someone had set a scalpel down beside you that's a little too sharp. Logically, that should worry you. Emotionally, you just think: at least if this falls into her hands, the cut won't come out crooked.

"Aida. Damage-control coordination, standby."

"Copy." Aida pulled up the ship's damage-control sector map. That quality she has most days — looking like a standardized answer key that learned to walk — turned out to be exactly right for this. Damage control, at bottom, is just taking worst case and cutting it into still fixable and not dead yet.

"Evelyn. D. Harvey. CIC to battle-readiness."

"Copy."

"Got it."

"Understood." The second D's voice hit the air, the bridge felt a little more like somewhere humans actually lived. His particular talent for dragging a military scene down to the floor of a teen drama, no matter how bad things get, is genuinely a remarkable form of chaos.

"Hoshino." Every nerve in my body locked up at once. Tobita hadn't even raised his voice, and I still felt the primal terror of being called up to recite in front of the whole class.

"Sir."

"Weapons control is yours. From here on, the Yukikaze's firepower isn't a projection. It isn't teaching material. It's the real thing — the kind that turns people into cosmic dust. Understood?"

"... Understood." I didn't, actually. Or — I understood the literal words. The psychological distance had just opened up into something enormous. It's one thing to read the sea is very deep in a book. It's another to stand at the rail and actually look down. I set both hands on the tactical station's control ring. The interface unfolded in layers ahead of me — main battery, secondaries, VLS, CIWS, jammer bays, torpedo control, power allocation, cooling limits, warhead menus, firing-arc interlocks, IFF safety locks.

Yesterday these were words on a page. Today every single button felt like it had a disaster buried underneath it. An authorization prompt floated up dead center on the screen. [FIRE CONTROL AUTHORIZATION: CONFIRM] I took a breath and pressed my finger to it. [CONFIRMED] Then the next layer. [LIVE ORDNANCE MAGAZINE LINK: STANDBY] [MAGAZINE SAFETIES: RELEASE AVAILABLE] [LOAD STANDARD COMBAT COMPLEMENT] I stared at that line, and my throat went dry for no good reason.

This was the first time I'd ever loaded live rounds into a weapons system. Just a button. Just text. Just a system prompt. But with the word simulation gone, the action suddenly carried weight — not literary weight, the kind where if my hand slipped and I hit the wrong key, someone downstream might not even have enough left of them to bury. I hate that feeling. Because it makes it obvious I'm not actually brave. I've just never been forced to find out exactly what I'm afraid of.

"What, hands shaking?" Jess didn't even turn her head. She was watching her own feed, but apparently she'd grown a dedicated organ just for monitoring my humiliation.

"No," I said.

"Oh. Must be your soul, then."

"Shut up."

"I can. But if you load Wombat where Shusui should go, I will laugh myself into retirement." I glared at her. I would very much like to load her into a single-use warhead and not retrieve the casing. Unfortunately, not an option. Back to the screen. At the top of the standard combat load sat the three names I'd nearly coughed up blood memorizing last night. Shusui — anti-air guided. Wombat — close-range scatter intercept. Parsifal — heavy anti-ship guided.

Below that, the main-battery precharge option, carrying a name so long it reads like proof the engineer had some kind of unresolved adolescent trauma: Bow-Mounted Axial Hyper-Energy Positron-Negatron Annihilation Decimation Cannon. Tannhäuser. To this day I don't believe a main gun needs a name that sounds like an opera villain's alias. Weapon designations should be practical. Nobody should have to pass a reading-comprehension test right before they die.

"Shimo." Maki's voice, from up front — not loud, but solid.

"Follow procedure. Check the base load first. Don't start with worst case." I blinked. She hadn't turned around. She was still standing at Roy's shoulder, eyes on the forward route and the master plot. But she knew I'd stalled. That, by itself, is completely unreasonable. This was not the moment for my heart to be doing anything extra, and I still have to admit — in that instant, something in my chest got tapped, very lightly. Infuriating. Also effective.

I leveled my breathing out and opened the standard load sequence.

"Shusui, standby," I reported.

"Confirmed," the system answered.

"Wombat, all CIWS bays linked."

"Confirmed."

"Parsifal, keep the cells sealed. Hold for the Captain's final lock release."

"Confirmed."

"Main battery, first-stage preheat, standby. Power draw capped short of the yellow line."

"Confirmed." As each command went out, the ammunition and power bars on the lower panel shifted from grey to blue, then from blue into the solid, warning-edged color of live status. From somewhere deep in the hull came a low, heavy sound of something moving — not loud, but carried up through the deck frame like a pack of invisible metal animals shifting where they slept. For the first time, I genuinely understood: the Yukikaze isn't just transportation. She bites. And right now, I was the one fitting her teeth.

Tobita, apparently deaf to all of it, kept his eyes forward.

"Transit time." Roy answered immediately.

"At current output, forty-three minutes to the first outer identification ring. Forty-seven if we hold low-emission profile."

"Hold low-emission," Tobita said.

"We're not here to set off fireworks. We're here to see who already is." If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

"Copy." Lan's board started filling with long-range noise and fragmentary IDs. Akari pushed the thermal map up on the left side of the main display — debris fields, cooling afterglow, wake residue layered over each other. On the tactical plot, the Yukikaze's approach to the convoy's coordinates looked simple: one line, one point, time moving forward. On a real ship, what comes after that line is every single person strapping in first. I ran the weapons checklist one more time. Shusui, standby, nominal.

Wombat, standby, nominal. Parsifal, sealed. Main battery, first-stage ready. CIWS, linked. Jammer bays, pressure nominal. Internal feed lines, green. I went down every field like double-checking answers before turning in an exam. And that's when I realized what was actually making me nervous wasn't will there be a fight. It was if there is, can I get these things out the door when it matters. Die in a sim, the lights come back up, everyone's still here.

Die for real, and it stops mattering whether the lights come back up at all.

"Hoshino." Elena, again.

"Ma'am."

"Fire control isn't about firing," she said.

"The actual job is knowing which one you don't press, at the exact moment everyone wants to press something." I went still for a second. That line was harder to memorize than any weapons table. It was also more like an actual answer than any weapons table had ever been.

"Understood, Major." Elena looked at me once, didn't say anything else, and gave the back of my chair a single light tap. Not comfort. Not encouragement. Closer to confirmation — that whoever's sitting in this seat, however much she still looks like a problem student who stays up too late with light novels, hasn't broken yet. For some reason, that one tap felt more like a point of no return than the formal authorization had. Up ahead, Maki turned her head, just slightly. Not toward me.

Just a brief, almost incidental sweep that happened to cross my station. I caught it anyway. She didn't say anything. Same level expression as always. Just her eyes, asking one question: holding steady? I didn't answer out loud — the bridge isn't the place to throw personal signals around. So I just put my hands back on the control ring and straightened my spine, and let that be the answer, both to the station and to her. Holding. More or less.

Beyond the main viewport, the Yukikaze's bow cut silently into the dark. Interior lighting had already shifted to combat color temperature — a shade colder, sanding the student-softness off every face and leaving something uglier and more real underneath. Engine vibration ran up through the deck, low, pressing at the soles of my feet. The course line ran straight for the convoy's coordinates, like a pre-written answer key. Nobody knew yet which column the question was going to detonate from first.

Tobita settled back in the captain's chair, eyes level on the forward view.

"All hands," he said.

"Starting now, stop thinking of yourselves as being in class." The line landed, and at the exact same moment, the small live-ordnance indicator at the far right of my weapons status row blinked, quietly, red. For reasons I didn't want to examine too closely, I understood, right then, that what I'd crammed into my head last night wasn't weapons data anymore. It was the thing that was going to cut me cleanly off, after today, from the side of the line marked student. The Yukikaze held her heading toward the convoy.

And I sat at Tactical, knowing for the first time, with total clarity, that if I fired — the universe wasn't going to hand anyone a replay. In the end, Major Elena Kirishima did put D back in CIC. Not because she'd had a sudden change of heart and decided to give a teenage boy a second shot at being a functional human being.

More likely because she'd already finished what she actually came to do — making absolutely sure D understood that, under her watch, the smart move was to lock the clowning and the antics both into the survival locker and swallow the key. So when he went back, he wore the exact expression of a large dog who'd just had his treats confiscated by a drill instructor — shoulders half-collapsed.

"I hadn't even done anything yet..."

"That sentence is usually the problem itself," Evelyn said, without looking up.

"I hadn't even reached the planning stage of a crime."

"Which means the Major stepped in at exactly the right time," Harvey added. D opened his mouth, found nowhere to put the words, and folded himself quietly back into his station — sitting three times straighter than usual. Rare enough that I briefly considered filing a commendation for Major Kirishima with Federal Public Order Services. Elena just stood in CIC, arms crossed, expression as undisturbed as if nothing at all had happened. That's the most dangerous kind of composure a superior officer can have.

She doesn't need to shout, doesn't need to slam anything. One look, and you start reconsidering whether you've been too loud since the day you were born. The Yukikaze held her combat-ready course toward the convoy. The transit went smoothly. Unnervingly smoothly. No pirates. No shortsighted privateers. No idiot with a head full of scrap aluminum deciding today was the day to try his luck against a supply convoy in some converted wreck. Not because the Yukikaze is especially fearsome.

Mostly because Federal retaliation is too much trouble. Bite a supply line today, and tomorrow the Fleet's tracking down your ancestors' grave coordinates for the paperwork. In other words, the universe has its own version of realism. Most people don't stay law-abiding because they're good. They stay law-abiding because the penalty math doesn't work out. This world — institutions and human nature both — has never once had a romantic bone in its body.

I watched the slow drift of cursors and ID frames across Tactical, checking weapons status, letting my brain wander somewhere unproductive. Like wondering — if the handoff kept going this smoothly, how much of the way Tobita had worked us over like death-row inmates earlier had actually been training, and how much had just been him enjoying himself. Given the man's name is Tobita, I'd put the latter at a solid forty percent.

Right about when I'd finished mentally filing him under chronic natural disaster with an education degree, a red dot popped up in the upper-left of the main display. My spine went straight in the same instant. So did the air on the bridge.

"Captain. Convoy signal confirmed," Akari said. Still level. But underneath the level, I could hear a thin, hard edge — something that had just stepped back from the lip of full alert. The ID frames at Radar expanded fast, cross-checking friendly codes and thermal profiles. One red marker after another flipped over to friendly colors. The convoy's heading, hull count, and escort formation printed out in a clean list, tidy enough to belong in a textbook appendix. Meaning: false alarm. I let a breath out, silent.

The handoff had gone so smoothly it made me want to swear. If the bridge were a reasonable place to publicly admit your heart had just done something unnecessary, I'd have asked Tobita straight out whether half that earlier tension had just been him running a personal stress test for entertainment. I hadn't finished putting that suicidal thought together when he spoke first.

"Roy." Just the name. Roy's whole body jumped — a real, visible flinch, like a current had grazed his spine. Too real. Real enough that I felt genuinely sorry for him. Tobita kept his eyes on the main viewport, voice carrying no particular weight at all.

"Scared?" Fuck. I cursed him, thoroughly and with zero class, entirely inside my own head. That question was cruel in a very specific way. Not ordinary cruel — the kind of cruel where you hand someone a button that could kill four hundred and fifty people, then lean over and ask, nervous? Like putting someone at the wheel on the lip of a cliff and adding, no pressure. The reason some adults shouldn't be left alone with students isn't the law protecting minors.

It's that the students might not manage to stop themselves from throwing the first punch. Roy's throat worked. His hands stayed on the wheel.

"... Yes," he said. Honest. He actually answered. I couldn't decide whether to admire the honesty or hold a moment of silence for his survival instincts. Tobita, for once, didn't follow it with another cut. He just tipped his chin, faintly.

"Good." That "good" was worse than saying nothing.

"Being scared is normal," Tobita said.

"Your hands don't get to be." Roy didn't answer. He just pressed his mouth into a tighter line. Because what came next wasn't ordinary navigation. We were about to jump to superluminal. It's as much a test of a captain's judgment as of a helmsman's feel for the ship. The Tactical Officer can spend the rest of the night afterward running through a hundred reasons why. CIC can compile the whole thing into a thousand pages of data.

But when it actually comes down to throwing a few hundred meters of hull, four hundred and fifty lives, and a full set of Federal standard-issue hardware into a warped fold of spacetime — the one who actually has to put her foot down on that last step is still the helmsman. And today, the one standing at that station was Roy.

"Minazuki and Chikuma entering FTL," Lan reported. Beyond the main viewport, both lead ships changed almost at once. Not the lazy movie-style whoosh and gone. More like each hull was caught by some invisible hand and tugged gently forward along its own bow — the whole silhouette trembling once in the frame — before the edges began to stretch, as if someone were smearing a gunmetal-grey shape into a single glowing thread.

It lasted just long enough to register that this wasn't something nature was ever meant to produce. Then, the next second, both ships snapped away like rubber bands let loose — gone clean out of the space they'd occupied.

"... Ah. The convoy's jumping too," Akari said, low. She switched the tracking frames to jump-trace mode, one by one. The dense cluster of friendly markers ahead thinned out fast, leaving only a few fading spacetime scars — like someone had cut a couple of bright wounds across a stretch of black water. Tobita didn't look at me. He just gave the order.

"XO. Ship-wide FTL warning."

"Understood." Maki didn't hesitate for even half a second. She reached for the intercom, and the moment her voice went out, the whole bridge snapped straight, as if some invisible line had just been drawn taut through the room.

"This ship is about to enter FTL transit. All hands, confirm restraints secured. Non-duty personnel, brace at the nearest fixed point immediately. Repeat — this ship is about to enter FTL transit—" Her tone was flat — flat to the point of cold. And it was exactly that coldness that made it impossible to doubt. Like a blade cut from ice: sharp, clean, and never once going to shake just because you were.

I had an extremely inappropriate thought right then: anyone who can still spare attention to look at Maki Kushima at a moment like this is either nursing a full-blown crush, or has something wrong with their survival instincts. I probably qualified on both counts.

"Bridge crew, restraint check," Maki added, setting the handset down. The bridge filled at once with the sound of buckles snapping shut. Click. Click-click. Clack. Not loud. Reassuring anyway — because it meant that at least some of this could still be handled by procedure. War, jumps, death, orders, responsibility: all of it too large. Large enough that you find yourself wishing the world would shrink, just for a moment, down to one strap, one buckle, one confirmed motion.

I locked my own harness and ran the weapons status one more time. Shusui, standby, nominal. Wombat, standby, nominal. Parsifal, sealed. Main battery, first-stage preheat complete. CIWS, linked and nominal. Power supply, stable. Good. If we were all about to collide headlong with theoretical physics, at least the Yukikaze would go in fully armed. Tobita stood behind Roy, unhurried, and gave him a single nod.

Roy took a long breath — then shoved the telegraph from standard cruise straight to the mark at the top of the scale. The needle hit the flank-speed zone with a short, crisp clack — cleaner than I'd expected. Clean enough to sound like a verdict.

"Attitude thrusters, linked and standby," Harvey reported from CIC.

"Course solution complete, forward path confirmed clear," Evelyn followed.

"Spacetime fluctuation generator, nominal," Akari said.

"External comms switched to pre-jump standard format. Complete," Lan reported. Procedure after procedure pushed the Yukikaze toward the same finish line. In the end, only the button was left — the single most conspicuous thing on the bridge, and the one that had absolutely no business showing up in a coming-of-age novel. Roy stared at it. In the second his finger hung in the air, I could practically hear a hundred versions of himself screaming inside his skull.

Because pressing it wasn't just starting something — it was handing the entire ship over, from this second on, to a set of physical laws with no interest in reasoning with you.

"Type-6 Space-Time Quantum Fluctuation Warp Engine — Kamikaze — engage!" Roy bit the line out through his teeth. The next second, the whole ship began to growl, low. Not an explosion — something that woke slowly out of the depths of the hull. The deck, the chair, the console, the wheel, even my own chest under the harness — all of it picked up that steadily building tremor. Like some enormous, cold-blooded metal animal turning over in her belly, and opening its eyes. Roy's shoulders visibly drew in.

Tobita's voice dropped in from behind him.

"You can be afraid." The bridge held still for a beat.

"But right now, you're the Yukikaze's helmsman," Tobita said, each word set down deliberately.

"Four hundred and fifty lives don't need you brave. They need you correct. Be careful. Don't hesitate." I have to admit, that line was more Tobita than any rousing speech could ever be. Also more frightening. Because he wasn't comforting Roy — he was pressing the exact shape of the responsibility straight into Roy's hands, no wrapping paper included. And Roy actually caught it.

"... Sir." Not loud. Steady, though. Almost in the same instant, every main screen on the bridge and in CIC switched over. The standard nav interface compressed into the corners, and the center filled with a broad field of red-and-yellow warning text. [FTL TRANSIT — COMMENCING] The warning lights blinked once, and the bridge's color temperature seemed to drop another notch.

"Jump prep complete," Akari said.

"Jump corridor stable," Evelyn said.

"Hull secure, nominal," Harvey added.

"Ship-wide restraint compliance at ninety-eight percent. Remainder being handled by section NCOs," Lan finished, fast. D, apparently unable to hold it in any longer, finally squeezed out a mutter: "Are those two percent just... living life on their own terms..."

"D." Major Elena said his name, mild.

"... Shutting up." Good. The universe returned to peace. I pressed my hands to the tactical station's control ring, eyes locked on the viewport ahead. The star field in front of the Yukikaze began to distort. Not a sudden wash to white. First, a handful of distant fixed stars rippled — the way water ripples around a dropped stone — a distortion so faint you half suspected your own eyes.

Then the ripple spread outward, and the whole space ahead began to warp like glass under heat: light stretching, star-points smearing, the familiar cosmic background losing its usual sense of perspective and distance. Hard to describe. If I had to: it looked like the whole world had suddenly admitted it was only a sheet of paper that could be crumpled — and the Yukikaze was about to punch a fresh hole straight through it.

"Jump!" The button went down. The hull answered with a resonance deeper and heavier than anything so far. Not an impact — something more convincing than one. My whole field of view was swallowed by white light pouring in from ahead in a fraction of a second, every outline around me dragged forward with it. The harness bit into my shoulders. My stomach carried the faint, hollow sense of being scooped empty. Pressure shifted behind my ears.

Even my own heartbeat felt like it landed a beat late, chasing after the rest of me. Then — The Yukikaze was gone. Not the sensation of moving. The original stretch of space was genuinely left behind. The torn-open white light ahead was both a crack and a doorway, and the whole ship rode the fold that the Kamikaze drive had ripped open, plunging straight into FTL in one motion. I held my breath without meaning to.

For one moment I forgot I was even sitting at Tactical — forgot Tobita, forgot CIC, forgot the convoy still waiting ahead of us. Only one thought was left in my head: throwing four hundred and fifty lives into FTL sounds heroic on a recruitment poster. From inside, it feels closer to the whole ship lending its soul to physics for three seconds. And physics doesn't guarantee giving it back in one piece. By the time my vision steadied, I found my knuckles had gone white on the control ring.

Jess glanced over, one corner of her mouth curling.

"First jump?"

"... What do you think."

"You had a cute look on your face just now."

"Say one more word and I'm writing you into Wombat's targeting solution."

"Ooh, fierce. Tactical's finally starting to sound like Tactical." I was about to fire back when, up ahead, Maki turned her face slightly. Not a full look back — just a brief pass of her eyes over me, calm, checking whether my soul had actually made it back into my body. It lasted less than a second. Short enough to pass for imagination. But for no reason I could name, that hollowed-out, weightless feeling FTL had carved into my chest actually settled a little, because of it. I immediately started despising myself.

Good work, Hoshino Shimo. The whole ship just completed an FTL insertion, and your first move isn't checking post-jump fire-control sync, isn't confirming weapons interlocks — it's finding your emotional footing off one glance from the Executive Officer. If the Academy has a disciplinary code for lovesick cadets, I'm probably already due a demerit. Unfortunately, before I finished tearing myself apart, Tobita's voice came down again.

"Tactical." I sat up straight.

"Sir."

"Confirm post-jump weapons sync."

"Copy." Right. Youth, palpitations, poetry, the spiritual aftershocks of FTL — all of it could go roll somewhere else for now. The Yukikaze was still running. The convoy was still ahead. Tobita was still alive. And with all three of those true at once, nobody had any business staying starry-eyed for long. I dragged my eyes back to the board and started walking the fire-control data item by item. Only this time, that cold, hard tightness in my chest had quietly changed shape. It wasn't only fear anymore.

It felt more like this: I was really here. Really on the Yukikaze. Really thrown, along with all these people, into whatever was waiting out there in a universe none of us had a map for. And we still had to make it back alive.