Chương 273: 113. Frozen Planet 1

I hung the frozen planet's data on the bridge side-screen, letting Roy hold the ship steady on the plotted course first, then stood.

"I'm heading to medbay," I said.

"Aida — turn water-cycling and collection requirements into a briefing. Don't lay it out like you're submitting to a journal. Roy, hold current heading. Lan, any change in external signals, you call me immediately. Jess—" I looked at her. Jess sat up on instinct, like a student who'd just been called on and genuinely wasn't sure whether this was a promotion or an execution.

"Not the chair this time," I said.

"Stay on the bridge. Sort through the rationing complaints we just got. Separate the loudest, the dumbest, and the ones most likely to turn into real problems." Jess blinked.

"The loudest and the dumbest are usually the same people."

"Which is exactly why I'm asking you to sort them, not write a eulogy for humanity."

"Copy." I nodded and left. On the way to medbay, the Yukikaze had already begun settling into that strange, particular rhythm of wounded routine. A damage-control rating knelt by a bulkhead, refastening a loose interior panel.

A little further on, two supply ratings squeezed past carrying a crate of emergency dry rations, one muttering, "They're counting hot water by the milliliter now — this ship might as well start reclaiming tears," while the other answered, completely deadpan, "You'd have to produce some first." Good. Complaining meant people were still alive. Complaining while still carrying the crate steady meant the ship wasn't falling apart yet. Medbay hit me with that aggressively clean disinfectant smell the moment I walked in.

The lights were still bright enough to make you feel guilty, as if every drop of blood, every ache, every near-death indignity had to be lit with total clarity before it qualified as treatment. The medic from the earlier call moved toward me right away.

"Lieutenant."

"I'm here to see Ash and Maki. And to ask a few things," I said.

"Go ahead."

"Casualties first." I kept my voice down.

"Ash and Maki — roughly how long until discharge?" His expression stayed level, the kind of level that comes from answering this exact question a dozen times a day.

"If the standard is cleared for light, non-strenuous duty outside medbay, both Captains should reach discharge threshold before we arrive at the yard." He paused, adding with strict precision, "Sustained combat operations or prolonged standing duty are not recommended immediately after." Translation: hard to kill, bones cooperating, but no bandaged-hero-commanding-the-bridge recruitment footage in their near future.

"D and Harvey?"

"Both sustained impact trauma and moderate concussion. Likely discharge the day after tomorrow." He paused.

"Ensign Sado is different. Multiple fractures. She'll need immobilization and monitoring. Not returning to station any time soon." I nodded. Not great. Not bad enough to want to headbutt a wall, either. What this ship needed right now wasn't perfection — it was every still usable holding the line long enough to matter.

"Captain Tobita?" The medic's eyes dropped, just slightly.

"Remains in cryogenic suspension. Vitals stable. Waking him is not recommended until we reach external medical and repair facilities." Which meant Tobita was alive. His survival simply had nothing to do with what got decided aboard this ship right now. I swallowed that and didn't push.

"Understood." He stepped aside, letting me through. Ash and Maki were in the same section, two beds apart — a sensible arrangement. Close enough to monitor both, far enough apart that two people whose brains hadn't fully crawled out from under impact and medication wouldn't look at each other, confirm they were both alive, and jointly decide to take over the ward. Ash sat half-propped against the headboard, an IV line taped to his arm.

He had a little more color than the first time I'd seen him, and his eyes were already clear — not well-rested clear, but the specific clarity of someone already loading the tactical situation back into his head. Maki's side was quieter. The cuts at her temple and cheek had been dressed. With the blood wiped away, most of her usual sharp, clean lines had come back — just too pale, pale the way a blade's spine looks under moonlight. The second I walked in, her eyes lifted and settled on me. Steady.... Infuriating.

Because that look was clear enough to make me suspect she could probably calculate exactly how many fresh problems the bridge had picked up, just from the speed of my walk.

"Looks like you're still alive," Ash said first.

"Barely," I said.

"The bridge too." His eyebrow rose, fractionally.

"Which means it's not going well."

"Take that reasoning to the entrance exam and you'd score a few extra points." I dragged a chair over and sat between them, close enough to see both at once. Maki asked first.

"Ship status." Two words. Same as always — short, direct, allergic to sentiment. I went through it, item by item. CIC sealed. D and Harvey out in two days. Evelyn down for a while. Whole ship now under Phase One water rationing. The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. At that last one, Ash's expression finally, visibly shifted.

"Water rationing?"

"Yes," I said.

"Without it, we don't last until we find somewhere to fix the ship." Maki didn't answer right away. She just held my eyes a second.

"You found somewhere." I pulled up Victor's pirate-flavored star chart. This time I didn't hide anything — not even the line scrawled in red like a drunk with a highlighter. If I was still practicing information hygiene in front of these two, I was just wasting time. The Lawrence Shipyard coordinates glowed at the center. I collapsed the chart to the relevant sector and pointed to the new blue-white marker.

"The problem is, before we even get to the yard, we have to go here." Ash's eyes narrowed.

"Water stop?"

"Frozen planet," I said.

"Water ice, CO₂ ice, activated copper, plus two anomalous substances that'll make a materials scientist very happy and a logistics officer's head hurt — Frostcrystal and Condensed Carbon. Low gravity, no life signatures, no storms. Not far off our current heading. Good spot to grab water and basics before we drag the ship on to Lawrence." Maki's first question wasn't about scenery, and it wasn't about risk. It was:"How bad is the water system."

"Bad enough I had to go look myself, then come back and announce a shipwide bathing ban." She was quiet a moment.

"How did the ship take it?"

"Three categories," I said.

"One: grief — the galley just found out today's soup has been officially downgraded to slightly salty hot water. Two: protest — someone asked if he could at least wash his socks. Three: on the verge of collapse but still holding — that's Jess." Ash asked, "What happened to Jess?"

"Jess is currently acting acting captain of the Yukikaze." The ward went silent for half a second. Then Maki closed her eyes. Not unconscious — a very specific, headache-adjacent pause. The physical equivalent of: I am not currently well enough to correct every part of that sentence out loud, but know that I want to. Ash stayed calm. He just asked, "Did she post a story?" I looked at him.

"What exactly do you two think she is?"

"Someone who'd find the angle before the world ends," Ash said.... Unpleasantly accurate. I pulled the conversation back.

"Anyway. The bridge is stable enough for now. What I need from the two of you is one clean answer: is anything wrong with this order?" I expanded the route. Current position. Frozen planet. Lawrence Shipyard. Gray lines spread like cracks across the frontier, dragging this jump-battered ship toward a future that wasn't dignified, but was currently the only one with any shape at all. Ash spoke first.

"No better option," he said.

"Water first, ship second. Not a good road. But it's the one that's alive." Maki opened her eyes and looked at me.

"You're planning to lead the collection team yourself."... This woman really is insufferable. I hadn't said a word, and she'd already seen it.

"I was considering it."

"No." Fast — fast enough that it clearly hadn't needed a second's thought.

"Reason?"

"You're the one person on the bridge who can't afford to run off right now." She paused, then added the sharper cut.

"And you only just learned how to sit in that chair. Don't be in such a hurry to turn yourself into a specimen on a low-gravity planet." Ash sided with her this time.

"You stay aboard," he said.

"The first team needs strong field capability — but you don't drop the acting commanding officer with them. Especially not while neither of us is back on the bridge yet." I was quiet a moment. Honestly, I had wanted to go down myself. Not heroics — just that, right now, I trusted my own judgment slightly more than anyone else's. Which is exactly the problem: say that out loud, and it stops sounding like competence and starts sounding like a control issue. Maki watched me, her voice dropping a fraction.

"Go back to the bridge," she said.

"Lock the plan down. Then pick the team." She didn't say don't decide what not to tell us this time. But the meaning was still there. Deeper than before. Not because she was taking over. Because she was formally treating this as something the three of us carried together — not something I quietly patched over with my own life. I took a breath and nodded.

"Understood." I stood, folded the chart back into my terminal. At the door, I stopped and looked back.

"By the way." Ash looked up. So did Maki.

"Medic says you'll both be clear before we reach the yard. D and Harvey are out in two days. Evelyn's down longer." Ash nodded, filing the timelines away. Maki only asked one thing.

"What about you?"

"What?"

"When are you planning to rest?" I nearly laughed. Under current circumstances, that question was about as realistic as asking when I planned to take a casual walk on the moon.

"When the Yukikaze decides she's ready to," I said. Maki didn't smile. She just said, evenly:"Then at least remember to drink water." I almost lost it completely. Under shipwide rationing, with washing your hair bordering on a court-martial offense, remember to drink water was practically a confession. So I looked away and muttered, "I know."

By the time I got back to the bridge, the mood had pulled itself back from we just announced a bathing ban and the whole ship is in mourning toward something closer to functional enough to hold a meeting. Jess popped up from the auxiliary seat the second she saw me.

"You're back! I sorted the complaints."

"Categories?"

"Loudest batch is Supply. Dumbest batch is berthing. Most likely to actually blow up—" she pointed toward Engineering, "—Victor said if anyone taps a hot-water line without authorization, he's hanging them off the condenser to dry."

"Good. Accurate sorting." I dropped back into the captain's chair and officially pushed the frozen planet's data onto the main display. The dead blue-white sphere rotated quietly at the front of the bridge, like a beautiful, freezing glass marble with zero interest in whether any of us lived or died.

"Everyone. Next step confirmed," I said. Roy, Lan, Akari, Aida, and Jess all looked over.

"We go to this frozen planet for water first, then Lawrence Shipyard." I opened the data fields one by one.

"Planet type: frozen. Primary resources: CO₂ ice, water ice, activated copper. Anomalous substances: Frostcrystal, Condensed Carbon. No life signatures. No storms. Thin atmosphere, low hazard rating. Day temp minus seventy-eight point four. Night minus one forty-two point one. Gravity: point zero four G." Jess's face scrunched at 0. 04G.

"So if you walk a little too fast you drift into the next county?"

"It's a planet, not a county," Lan corrected, cold as ever.

"You know what I mean." Aida added the collection requirements.

"First team needs portable drills, ice-cutting modules, reclaim bags, sample clamps, portable melt canisters, and low-temp water-screening gear. This isn't sightseeing. It's drill, melt, bring it back." Roy raised a hand slightly.

"I really don't mind staying aboard."

"Nobody's sending the helmsman down first," I said.

"Thank you." He said it with the profound sincerity of a man who'd just dodged a category of humiliation he hadn't even seen coming. Jess perked up immediately.

"I'll go," she said.

"I urgently need to escape the psychological damage of that chair, and low-gravity selfies—" I looked at her. She corrected on the fly.

"—low-gravity mobility makes collection work efficient. I'm well suited."

"You can go," I said.

"On the condition your helmet comms never once produce the phrase hey everyone, I'm currently at the edge of the universe."

"I can try."

"I don't believe you." Someone on the bridge actually laughed. Not much. Just enough to prove they still had spare energy left to be human on a day like this. Akari raised a hand, lazily.

"I don't want to go."

"Reason?" I asked.

"Low-G EVA gear's a pain," she said, completely unapologetic.

"And if I go down, who's watching sensors?" Good. One sentence, two goals: personal exhaustion with existence, and a perfectly logical excuse to dodge field duty. Very Akari. Lan spoke next.

"I'm staying aboard. External comms and data integration can't afford to be short-staffed right now."

"Agreed," I nodded. Aida gave the practical read.

"First team needs someone who can assess material on-site, someone who knows the gear, and steady hands." She looked at me.

"Supply's got two junior techs with cold-storage and cutting experience. Worth pulling."

"Names." She gave two: Corporal Goro from Engineering — the kind of man who looked like he'd fall in love with any piece of machinery that made noise — and Rating Mia from Supply, the young galley hand I'd overheard mourning the soup's demotion in the corridor. Good. If the ice turned out to be trouble, she'd be the first to ask whether it was safe to boil. I ran the roster in my head. The first drop team didn't need heroes.

It needed people who could work with their hands, follow orders, know when not to step somewhere, and not accidentally demonstrate a human-balloon ascent in 0. 04G. I looked at the frozen planet and tapped the armrest once.

"All right. First team: Jess, Corporal Goro, Rating Mia, plus one Security trooper in powered armor. Aida runs remote water-quality and equipment support. Lan, Akari, and Roy hold the ship. As for who leads—" I paused. Jess's eyes lit with the dangerous hope of could it be me.

"—still deciding," I said, flat. Her shoulders dropped instantly. Good. A little healthy respect for reality was necessary. While the bridge launched into a fresh, gratifyingly mundane round of arguing over gear loads, EVA harnesses, and who'd be stuck hauling the big ugly melt canister, I watched the dead ice world on the main display and understood, quite clearly: from here on, the Yukikaze's real trouble was only going to keep landing, one piece at a time.