Chương 270: 111. Acting Captain

The captain's chair was cold. Metal that didn't care the last person in it had just been carried out, and didn't care whether the next one up was qualified. It just did its job and reminded you: a seat is a seat. It doesn't wait for anyone. So I sat down. I sat in the captain's chair, staring at the main display, feeling like I was waiting for a very bad verdict. We got lucky.

Or, to be more precise, the Yukikaze's navigation suite — concussed hard enough to forget its own name during the jump — was finally starting to remember what it existed for. The battering we'd taken around the Singularity Jump had clearly knocked the computer into a fugue state. Now, the gyros began ticking back toward true. Nav indicators lit one after another.

The red alerts around the star chart, which had been flashing like a rabid dog a few minutes ago, backed down into something closer to the polite, well-behaved error output of a civilized system. I watched the numbers stabilize, one field at a time. It didn't make me feel lighter. It made me feel heavier. Because some things, when they're blurry, you can still lie to yourself about. Once they snap into focus, you lose even the option of playing dumb.

"Position fixed," the AI reported, in that infuriatingly calm voice of its. I zoomed the chart out. Looked once. And felt like someone had dropped a boulder straight through my chest and let it sink. We were off. Not a little off. Not the oh no, the nav routed us to the wrong district kind of off. This was the kind where the universe slaps you clean off the page. We weren't in the wrong neighborhood. We were off the map entirely.

We'd been in the Parker sector, inside Orion's Alpha — the part of the tactical chart that always looked, on paper, like it still belonged under the umbrella of civilization. Put plainly: we'd been standing at our own front gate, stuck a knife into the intruder outside, and meant to hop the fence to a better firing position before he came around. Instead — We'd missed the fence, lost the yard, and the deed had blown off somewhere we couldn't see. I zoomed in again.

Federal territory, border trade lanes, known picket lines, old nav-buoy chains — each fell away in turn, peeling back from the deep black background. When I hit one particular frame, my fingers actually paused, as if refusing to accept the data unless my eyes agreed to it first. The Yukikaze had been dumped at — The filament fringe of the Boötes Void. The Void Wall. Cold sweat crept up the back of my neck.

Put in terms that don't tie your brain in knots: this was roughly the old Earth American West during the frontier days — only worse. Not a border town. Not the end of the rail. Not the romanticized go a little further and it gets interesting kind of frontier. The part of the map where the labels start getting lazy, where civilization's arm has started to ache from reaching this far, where even the mailman and the priest argue over whose turn it is to go first.

Good news: we hadn't been dropped directly into the Void itself — not into that three-hundred-million-light-year slab of nothing, so thin even photons seem to lose interest in crossing it. If we'd landed there, I wouldn't have to think about command, logistics, medical care, or morale at all. We'd be free to focus purely on the far more practical question of how many days does it take an entire crew to quietly starve to death together.

Bad news — We were four to five hundred million light-years from the nearest Federal outpost. Four to five hundred million. Not a number that sounds impressive shouted aloud. The kind that kicks whatever was left of anyone's optimism straight through the teeth. I ran the math fast. Even if the Kamikaze hadn't burned out. Even if the Type-6 could still run clean point-to-point jumps.

Even if everything went right — no pursuit, no failures, no supply problems, no second round of the universe using us as dice — we'd still be looking at roughly three months, with almost no resupply, before we saw another friendly hull. Three months. A ship that had just fought a battle, jumped off-course, lost her captain to critical injury, her XO to unconsciousness, and her engine to a three-button antique. Three months, in a place like this. I closed the chart.

Fast — fast enough that it looked like I was afraid someone would see. Because I knew this couldn't be said out loud. Not yet. Maki wasn't awake. Ash hadn't taken over. Jess had just been crying like her whole life had been crumpled into pulp. Roy was probably already destined for nightmares about three buttons in a row. Lan and Aida were both in that state where the mind was running but the emotions had a do not touch sign taped over them.

If I stood up right now, cleared my throat, and announced — Good news, everyone. We're stranded four to five hundred million light-years from the nearest Federal outpost. That wouldn't be disclosure. That would be a firing squad for morale. So I decided to let this one rot in my stomach for now. Given what was already down there, one more piece of rot wasn't going to change much. I'd barely closed the chart when the dedicated line beside the captain's chair rang.

That sound, right now, was extra sharp — like someone ringing a doorbell at a wake. I looked at it for two seconds, then picked up. The screen lit, and sure enough, Victor's broad, bearded face filled it. The man himself always looked like an old freighter that had gone through some illegal refit and still insisted on putting to sea — not something you'd trust on sight alone, but somehow, every time things actually blew up, still refused to fall apart.

"Kid," Victor said, in that same tone he always had — someone waking up half-drunk at midnight and finding the world too loud.

"You look troubled." I looked at him and realized I couldn't even be bothered to fake politeness.

"Yeah," I said.

"I just found out we might be stuck out here for the rest of our lives. Should I not be?" He didn't produce a single normal-human reaction — no what, really?, no widened eyes. He just grunted. The specific grunt of an old bastard whose whole face says this is nothing, kid, I had it worse. Then he said:"Kid. I'm sending you something good." A file dropped into the bridge's internal inbox.

"My private stash," Victor said.

"Don't go telling anyone." My brow had barely started to pull together before he cut the line.... Right. Very Victor. Half a sentence, attitude fully intact, always leaving just enough room that you want to hit him even while he's helping — otherwise his life wouldn't feel complete. I opened the file. Then I went quiet. It was a star chart. But not a standard-issue military chart, and not the kind of proper navigational data the Federal Civil Aviation Authority would ever hand out.

The whole thing was deeply suspicious — suspicious enough that I could practically smell contraband fuel, cheap liquor, and black-market parts coming off the screen. The route markings weren't Federal standard notation. Handwritten annotations crowded the margins. Several points were circled with arrows and abbreviations no official cartographer would ever use. This wasn't a nav chart. This was a pirate's private survival notebook. I stared at it for a few seconds, the corner of my mouth twitching.

"Fuck," I muttered.

"I knew it. Victor used to be a pirate. Goddamn it." Weirdly, saying it out loud made me feel a little steadier. Maybe because once things go bad enough, discovering your drunk Chief Engineer really does have an illegal, frontier-scented past starts to feel reassuring — like, okay, at least some part of this universe is still running on the kind of absurd logic I understand. One point on the chart was marked. The coordinates were remote — the kind that would never appear in any official resupply index.

Beside it, a handwritten name: Lawrence Shipyard. I zoomed in. Then zoomed in again. It sat tucked against a gray thread of route along the edge of the Void Wall, thin as a capillary. The location was filthy, hidden, and ugly — which was exactly why it looked like the kind of place that might actually let a person live. Then I saw the note added underneath, in red pen. Large lettering. A proud tone. Content thoroughly unfit for any formal military report.

BIG-TITS STRIP BAR IS FUCKING GREAT I stared at that line, expression flat, for a full three seconds. Then buried my face in my hands and let out a long breath.

"... Fuck." In that moment I understood, with total clarity: our only halfway-credible way out was an illegal repair dock buried in the trash seams of the universe, tucked inside an ex-pirate Chief Engineer's private inbox — and the single most prominent supplementary note on that navigational data wasn't about fuel quality, defenses, or resupply rates. It was about a strip club. This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

This universe genuinely has no interest in letting anyone die with dignity. I pulled the chart back up and stared at the dot marked Lawrence Shipyard. The bridge was still a mess. Maki still hadn't woken up. Tobita was lying in some other room. The Kamikaze was dead. We were four to five hundred million light-years from anyone friendly. And the only route that wasn't obvious suicide came with a pirate's survival map and one deeply unprofessional red footnote. I should have felt hopeless.

Instead, looking at that dot, something else came up slowly. Not comfort. Not hope. More like — fine. At least we're not completely without somewhere to go. And under these circumstances, simply having somewhere to go already qualified as a small miracle. I collapsed the chart back into my private layer and didn't push it to the main display. Not yet.

Not before Maki woke up, not before Ash could stand back up in one piece, not before I'd worked out how to say we've been exiled to the edge of the map in a way that wouldn't crack the whole ship in half. For now, this stayed with me. I leaned back in the chair and looked up at the unknown-space overlay still pulsing on the main display, and said, very quietly, to no one:"Lawrence Shipyard, huh." Even the name didn't sound like somewhere you could put on an expense report.

The bridge had only just begun to piece together something that resembled order when the comm rang. Not the private line beside the chair, the one reserved for a drunk Chief Engineer's confessions and life-ruining updates. The other kind — the kind the whole bridge hears the second it connects, whether they want to or not. I didn't hesitate. I opened the channel. The screen lit up.

A medic stood at its center, uniform immaculate, expression professional enough that you'd never guess the bridge had nearly shaken everyone into canned goods a short while ago. He gave a brief salute, then spoke in the tone perfectly suited for delivering death notices — fortunately, this time the content was slightly better.

"Reporting in. Captain, Third Class, Ash Vander, and Captain Maki Kushima have completed initial treatment. Both transferred to the general ward." I stared at him for two seconds. Good. I'd barely finished running my own life through the wringer twice over, and Medical had already rebuilt two half-wrecked officers well enough to move to a regular ward.

If the Federal medical system could spare a little capacity to patch up the half of my own heart that had just been used as a jump stabilizer, I'd happily write them a commendation letter after the war.

"Can I see them?" I asked.

"Yes." I thanked him and cut the line. Then closed my eyes and let my soul take one short breath. Maki was awake. Ash was awake. Those two facts alone made the air on the bridge feel a little less like the inside of a coffin. When I opened my eyes, my brain had already sorted the next steps into order. Not a pretty order. Functional enough. I got up and walked over to Jess. She'd stopped wailing, but her whole body was still shaking. Not for effect — not the half-real I was so scared kind.

The genuine kind, the kind where your nervous system hasn't fully caught up yet after being thrown right up against the line between life and death. I put a hand on her shoulder.

"Jess." She looked up. The second she registered it was me, her eyes went red all over again.

"Shimo... Shimo—" Then she just grabbed onto me.... Fine. I looked down at this girl who'd been crying like the world had ended ten minutes ago and was now clinging to me like a castaway who'd finally found something to hold onto, and felt, mostly, exhausted. But shoving her off right now would have crossed a line even I didn't want to cross.

So I just stood there and let her hold on for a couple of seconds, while some colder part of my brain quietly noted: apparently the job description of acting commanding officer also includes serving as an emergency comfort toy.

"I need to go to medbay," I said.

"So I need you to do one thing for me." Jess nodded hard against my shoulder, like a recruit who'd just been handed a critical mission, tears not yet dry. I lifted my hand and pointed at the chair, which by now looked less like furniture and more like a cursed inheritance device.

"Go sit in that." Jess followed my finger. Her face produced exactly the expression mine had worn a few minutes earlier. Not shock — the kind of blank where your soul says huh? before your body's caught up.

"Anything happens, route it to me first," I said.

"... Huh?" Good. That one finally made it out loud.

"I'm going to medbay. I'll be quick." I said it while already steering her toward the chair with a hand that left no room for negotiation. Jess still hadn't fully processed being shoved to a very inconvenient new altitude in life before she was half-dragged, half-pressed into the seat.

"You're now the acting acting captain of the Yukikaze, Jess McCallow." Jess blinked. Her lips moved.

"Shimo..."

"Mm?"

"Can I take a selfie for my story?" I stared at her. She stared back. The bridge held its breath for a second.... Fuck. This one's mental resilience was ridiculous. She'd been sobbing like the end of the world five minutes ago, and now she was thinking about social media. In a way, people like Jess might genuinely be harder to break — her brain never seemed to allocate a hundred percent of its bandwidth to fear. It always kept a corner in reserve for figuring out how to make the absurd feel routine.

"No," I said, already heading for the hatch.

"Not unless you want to personally invite an Imperial task force over." Jess pouted — the exact aggrieved look you'd expect from someone who'd just had her favorite candy confiscated, not someone who'd just been handed the captain's chair. I didn't dignify it with a response and left the bridge. It wasn't until I was out in the corridor that I really registered what it meant to move through this ship in this particular capacity.

The damage-control crews, medics, and Security personnel I passed all paused, however briefly, when they saw me. Not the curious kind of pause — the kind that follows a quick assessment, then a fast adjustment of posture. Some nodded. Some stepped aside. Some carried an unspoken question in their eyes — not who are you, but what happens now. I hated that feeling. Because it reminded me that sitting in that chair wasn't something only I knew about anymore. Other people had already seen it.

Medbay was brighter than I expected. Warship infirmaries all seem to share this flaw — no matter how many people died outside, no matter how wrecked the bridge got, the lights in here are always bright enough to force everyone to admit exactly how fragile they are. The air held disinfectant, regrowth gel, antimicrobial mist, and the faint iron trace of blood that had already been cleaned away. Cleaner than the bridge by a wide margin, which somehow made it feel less human.

The medic from the call met me at the door.

"Lieutenant." He gave a short nod.

"Captain Tobita?" I asked first. His expression didn't move, but the weight sitting behind that professional calm dropped something in my chest.

"Critical," he said.

"Onboard equipment isn't sufficient for full reconstruction. We've completed emergency hemostasis, stabilized internal pressure, and applied neural protection. To hold his survival odds, we've had to place Captain Tobita in cryogenic suspension for now." I was quiet a beat. Very medical, that sentence — every word precise, and none of them leaving any room to retreat from reality. In plain terms: Captain Tobita wasn't dead. He also wasn't coming back any time soon.

"How long?" I asked.

"Until we reach a full repair and medical facility." He looked at me.

"Until then, his vitals will be held at minimum stable values." Which meant the one person on this ship best equipped to find a path only a lunatic could see had just been formally sealed into ice. I nodded to show I understood.

"Ash and Maki?" He stepped aside.

"Both awake. Emotional stimulation and extended conversation aren't recommended." Great. That was basically him telling me: please don't turn medbay into fleet command. Unfortunately, that's more or less exactly what I was about to do. I walked into the general ward. Quiet inside — quiet enough that the hum of the machines felt deliberate.

Ash lay on the inner bed, shoulder and flank freshly bandaged, still pale, but his eyes were open and already running the kind of assessment that tallies assets and losses the instant it wakes up. Maki was in the other bed. The cuts at her temple and along her cheek had been treated, and with the blood cleaned away, most of the face I knew had come back — just far too pale. Seeing her awake finally loosened something that had been sitting in my chest since the bridge. Just slightly. Just once.

Because the next second, she looked at me, her gaze as steady as if she'd never gone under at all.

"How's the bridge?"... There it was. That's the most infuriating thing about her. Anyone else coming back from the edge asks where am I, what happened, is there water. Not Maki. Maki always opens with the one question you least want to answer carelessly.

"Holding," I said. Not a lie. Just missing a lot of details that would give a person an instant headache. Maki looked at me without speaking. But the look lingered a beat too long — long enough that I could feel her taking my expression apart like a report with something wrong in it.

"Then why do you have that face?" My mouth twitched. This woman really was insufferable. Not the loud kind. The too familiar kind — familiar enough that half a degree of tension in my jaw, or one glance sliding away too fast, was already enough for her to catch. Ash was more direct. He pushed himself up a little, voice still thin, but the question fully formed.

"Ship status?" I took a breath.

"Main hull's intact, no structural damage. A few compartment breaches. Kamikaze's dead — no jumps for a while. Main propulsion's still running, but top speed's sub-light." Ash frowned.

"Position?" The ward went quiet. Maki didn't push. Neither did Ash. But it was exactly because neither of them pushed that dragging it out any longer started to feel like a kid hugging a broken toy, refusing to admit the damage. I opened the private layer and threw the chart into the space between the two beds.

"Position's... a bit of a problem." A bit was generous. The moment the chart expanded, even the air in the ward seemed to drop a degree. Ash stared at the coordinates. His face darkened within two seconds. Maki's eyes tracked across Orion's Alpha, the Parker sector, the original course, the jump-deviation track, and finally landed on the small marker sitting like something flung carelessly into the corner of the universe. Her gaze shifted, very slightly.

"Void Wall," Ash said quietly.

"Yeah," I said.

"We got thrown to the filament fringe of the Boötes Void." Ash was quiet a moment, then delivered a very precise summary.

"So this isn't being lost." He looked up at me.

"This is closer to exile." Maki didn't comment right away. She just looked at me again.

"You didn't tell the bridge." Not a question. I didn't pretend otherwise.

"No," I said.

"They'd just crawled back from a jump accident. Telling them we're four to five hundred million light-years from the nearest Federal outpost right then wouldn't have done anything except make Jess cry a second time." Maki was quiet for a moment. She didn't argue.

"Not a wrong call," she said, evenly.... Coming from her, that was somehow more reassuring than the medic's stable condition had been. I pulled up the other chart.

"We're not entirely without direction, though." Both of them looked over. The moment Victor's chart appeared in the air, the whole register of the room shifted — from a Federal disaster briefing to a smuggler captain's private, drunk-written survival notes. Hand-drawn lines, gray-market routes, unexplained abbreviations, suspicious markers — a configuration that screamed illegal while somehow also whispering this is exactly the kind of place people actually survive in. Ash's frown deepened.

"What is this?"

"Victor gave it to me," I said. Maki's eyes swept over it without comment, but I was fairly sure her first internal reaction had matched mine: this looks like evidence. I zoomed in on the marked point.

"Lawrence Shipyard. Victor calls it his... private stash." Ash studied the coordinates and didn't reject it outright. That was good. If even someone like him led with this looks like pirate navigation instead of unusable, then the place was, technically, viable. The ward was quiet for a few seconds. Then the corner of Maki's eye twitched, very slightly. I followed her gaze down. Saw the line in red. BIG-TITS STRIP BAR IS FUCKING GREAT... Right. That line.

When I'd seen it on the bridge, I'd wanted to feed Victor into the thrusters, beard first. Seeing it again didn't change my mind. Ash stared at it for a full two seconds, then said, flat and cold:"Now I understand why you walked in with that face." Maki pressed a hand briefly to her temple — half headache, half something else.

"This chart is very Victor."

"That's not a compliment, is it?" I asked.

"No," Maki said. Good. At least we still had basic consensus on something. I pulled the map back to the relevant sector.

"Whatever the bar's like, Lawrence Shipyard is currently the only real direction we have. Kamikaze's dead. Main propulsion can't sustain a long drift. Crawling back to Federal space at sub-light isn't realistic. If we want to live, we fix the ship first." Ash watched the display, tapping one finger once against the sheet. A small movement. He was already running the numbers.

"Distance?" I gave him the rough figure. Ash nodded. His expression didn't relax, but it shifted — from disaster to fine, at least this is a disaster we can work with.

"We head there first," he said.

"We'll sort the rest out on the way." The moment he said it, the whole situation took on a brutal kind of simplicity. Right. Head there first. Because the only other option was falling apart slowly at the edge of the universe. Maki looked at me. Her face was still too pale, the medical patch still taped to her temple. But her eyes had come back to the version I knew — clear, steady, and deeply annoying.

"Get back to the bridge," she said.

"You should still be lying down."

"I know." She paused, then added the part she actually meant.

"Don't decide what not to tell us next time." I looked at her. The weight sitting in my chest suddenly didn't feel quite so lonely. She wasn't blaming me. She was saying: next time, let us carry it with you.... Damn her. Saying something like that, right now, was worse than just telling me I'd done well. Because it actually made me want to keep going. I closed the chart and nodded.

"Understood." Outside the ward, the equipment kept its steady rhythm. Somewhere colder and quieter, Tobita was sealed into sleep. On the bridge, someone who'd just stopped crying was sitting in the captain's chair, playing acting acting captain. The Yukikaze drifted at the edge of the universe. Kamikaze was scrap. The Federation was as distant as myth. And our only viable heading was a repair yard that sounded like it had never once in its life issued a legitimate receipt.

None of it looked like a road that would get anyone home safe. But at least — it looked like a place where the Yukikaze might, for now, avoid dying.