Chương 277: 115. Lawrence Shipyard 1

I kept the Frostcrystal situation buried, for now. The water was back. Everyone's ration cups had finally stopped being nothing but an insult to human existence. The soup in the mess hall started tasting more like soup and less like heated sorrow. Engineering even recovered enough energy to start arguing with Supply again — which, aboard the Yukikaze, is basically the local definition of spring arriving. But once people aren't quite so thirsty, their mouths free up. And once mouths free up, problems arrive.

They never start with the important people first. They start exactly where you'd rather not spend your time, but can't afford to ignore. Right after the first round of ration corrections went shipwide, I made my usual rounds down to the lower decks — checking damage-control sealing progress, and confirming the isolation perimeter around CIC. That section now looked like an organ on death row, still embedded in the Yukikaze's body, but everyone knew better than to touch it.

Sealing plates, warning lights, external cable reroutes, temporary data-bus bypasses — all of it radiating a very specific poor man's industrial honesty: this isn't fixed. This is just not dying yet. I'd barely turned into the main supply corridor when the sound ahead went wrong. Not a fight. Not that lively yet. More like the prelude to one — a group of people sitting on their anger while their voices climbed, one degree at a time. I meant to walk around it. Genuinely.

Acting command had taught me one very important lesson these past few days: not every mess deserves your personal footprint. But I'd taken half a step to the side when my own name got thrown out ahead of me, with zero politeness.

"—a lieutenant, and she's the one calling the shots from the captain's chair?" I stopped. Great. No dodging this one. About a dozen people had gathered ahead. Not a riot. Just enough to form a classic Yukikaze scene: we're not causing trouble, we're just being very publicly unhappy about something. The one speaking was a Master Sergeant from Supply.

I knew him — easy enough to work with, diligent, the type who'd make a model NCO in peacetime and turn into the most hated ration-gatekeeper on the ship the moment supplies ran short. He had a tablet under one arm, face soured like someone had just used his breakfast voucher to shine their boots. Standing across from him: Akari. Perfect. Now it was livelier.

Akari leaned against the bulkhead, arms crossed, wearing an expression that said say one more word and I will humiliate you with technical terminology until you question your right to exist. A few Engineering and damage-control hands stood nearby. Lan was there. Jess would never have missed this. Even Roy hovered at the outer edge, face broadcasting I don't want to be part of this, but I am already standing here. Aida stood furthest back, quiet as a cold-blooded judge sitting in on an accident inquiry.

Seeing that lineup, my first reaction wasn't a headache. It was the urge to laugh. The Yukikaze really is a remarkable ship. On other vessels teetering on the edge of crisis, the crew might huddle together for warmth, band together to survive, face tomorrow as one. Not this ship. This ship makes absolutely sure everyone still has the basic dignity required to argue properly first.

"Then who exactly gets to decide right now?" Akari's voice wasn't loud, but every word came out fastidiously cold.

"The Captain's critically injured and in cryo. The XO and the Captain, Third Class are both still in medbay. CIC's dead. You want to sit in the chair yourself?" The sergeant clearly had no intention of backing down.

"I'm not saying I want the seat. I'm asking — this rationing, this water-collection run, dragging people down to handle unidentified surface samples — who's accountable for it?"

"The acting captain is," Jess cut in, bright as someone playing a harmonica next to a powder keg.

"Very complete system. Feel free to experience it."

"Cut the jokes," the sergeant frowned.

"You're on her team. Of course you're covering for her." Jess pressed a hand to her chest, wounded.

"That's deeply unfair. I don't defend her just because we're on the same team."

"That's because you like watching chaos," Lan said. The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"Lan, don't undercut my stage right now."

"Just correcting the record." Standing at the edge of it all, I felt a genuine urge to turn around and walk back the way I'd come. Too late. Someone had already seen me. Roy spotted me first, his expression snapping into caught passing notes in class mode, spine straightening on its own. Then Jess — her eyes lit with pure oh no, the main character just arrived, this is about to get so good. The crowd parted, almost automatically, like something invisible had gently nudged it aside. Every gaze landed on me.

Wonderful. Truly. I was starting to understand why people in positions like this end up with such sour faces. Once everyone's waiting for you to speak, even an eye-roll registers as a political statement. I walked in and stopped two paces from the sergeant.

"Go on," I said. He blinked.

"What?"

"You had an objection." I held his eye.

"You said it in public. Finish saying it in public. Don't pretend it was just casual conversation the second I showed up." The corridor went quiet. His expression cycled through a few states before he finally gritted his teeth and spoke.

"... Yes, ma'am. I have an objection."

"Good." I nodded.

"Then say all of it." The thing to fear in a moment like this isn't opposition. What you fear is opposition that folds halfway through and turns into some sticky undercurrent instead — the kind that resurfaces later from three different corners at once, which is far more corrosive than a clean argument out in the open. He took a breath.

"I'm not questioning whether you've been working yourself to the bone, or whether you've carried real weight these past few days," he said.

"I'm questioning the authority. You're a lieutenant. Academy candidate-track. And right now, without the full chain of command restored, without a formal handover, you keep making high-risk calls. Bringing back water — good outcome. But what if someone had died that day? What if next time it's not almost fell into a crevasse — it's the whole team not coming home?" When that landed, the air in the corridor sank a notch. Because he wasn't entirely wrong.

The most inconvenient kind of challenge is never the baseless kind. It's the kind that's about seventy percent fact, twenty percent fear, and just enough of the remainder to keep you awake that night. I didn't answer right away. Beside me, someone shifted — Roy, out of the corner of my eye, starting to speak and then forcing himself to stop. Jess, for once, didn't immediately deflect with a joke. Akari kept her arms crossed, eyes fixed on my face, watching the way you'd watch a critical stress test.

Aida stayed silent — not the silence of disengagement, but the silence of someone paying very close attention to how I handled this. It struck me, suddenly, how thorough this ship was. Even its internal conflicts came pre-packaged as pop quizzes. I spoke slowly.

"You're half right." The corridor visibly blinked. The sergeant himself looked thrown, clearly not expecting me to concede anything first.

"My qualifications were never perfect for this," I said, holding his eyes, voice level.

"If Captain Tobita were on his feet, or if Captain Kushima and Captain, Third Class, Vander were fully back on duty, this seat wouldn't be mine. I know that better than you do." A few gazes shifted. I kept going.

"But right now the question isn't whether it should have been me. The question is that during those days, this ship needed someone to make decisions. Water was short. CIC was scrap. The Kamikaze was half-dead. The transit was five days long. Medbay was full. My choice back then wasn't between perfect command and imperfect command. It was between someone decides, or everyone waits together to die." The last four words landed, and the quiet tightened another notch. Too blunt.

But I wasn't in the mood to wrap it in anything gentler right now.

"As for the risk." I looked at him.

"You're right about that too. The water run was high-risk. Handling the anomalous surface sample was high-risk. If you have an alternative plan that keeps this whole ship hydrated and guarantees zero risk, put it forward now. I'll listen on the spot." His lips moved. Nothing came out. Because there wasn't one. This ship didn't have a survive steadily option right now. Only pick the version that doesn't kill everyone immediately, and hold on. I stepped forward. Not much. Enough to make clear this wasn't a debate.

"You can question me," I said.

"You should. Because if there's no voice like this at all, the Yukikaze really will just be a crew of nodding corpses. But once you've raised it, you'd better be ready to carry what comes after. Not throw the words out and wait for someone else to absorb the fallout." I looked around the circle. Not just at him. At all of them.

"From today, if you have an objection, bring it to the bridge. Openly. Formally. I don't accept it whispered behind backs. I especially don't accept deliberate slowdowns during rationing, damage control, or execution, followed by command made the wrong call as an excuse afterward. Whoever wants to push back can stand up and say so — and whoever does, I'll deal with directly. But until the full chain of command is formally restored, this ship still runs on one system of orders." I paused. Then dropped the last line.

"And right now, that system is still me." The corridor went so quiet it felt like someone had switched off the ventilation just to listen. I knew that was heavy. Heavier than I'd originally meant to go. But sometimes, if you try too hard to be the person everyone's comfortable with, you end up being the person who lets the whole ship slide into the next crack instead. This wasn't the seat I wanted. But before I stepped down from it, I had to make it hold. The sergeant's jaw stayed rigid for a moment.

Then he straightened and dipped his head.

"... Understood, Acting Captain." I didn't press further.

"Good. Then go redo Supply's second-round ration table. I want actual consumption figures and a five-day transit model — not the last draft, which read more like a grief essay about scarcity." Someone in the back failed to hold back a snort. The sergeant's face darkened, but he answered, "Yes, ma'am," and turned away. Before the crowd fully dispersed, Akari gave me a look.

"Passable," she said. This woman's stinginess with praise deserves genuine respect. Jess drifted over immediately, murmuring, "That last line was pretty good. I almost clapped."

"You clap, and tomorrow's hot ration becomes nutrient gel."

"See? This is what power corruption looks like." Lan added, without looking up, "But it worked." Roy edged closer, expression complicated.

"Shimo, just now you...

""Sounded like I was borrowing from Maki?" I said.

"... A little." I went quiet for half a beat.

"Then I'm in a worse mood now." Even Aida turned her face slightly aside, like she was suppressing a smile. I saw it. Didn't bother caring. Because honestly, after delivering that whole speech, I couldn't entirely tell myself whether I'd been shoring up authority — or just stubbornly bracing a seat I had no intention of keeping. And the second option probably held an embarrassingly large share of the truth.