Chương 320: 136.Way Home 2

Once everyone on the bridge had settled into their stations, the air went thin. Not because there was an oxygen problem. If the Yukikaze had a life-support failure right now, I'd recommend the whole ship disband on the spot and everyone hold hands and go grow potatoes instead — at least that would be a net positive contribution to society. What made the air thin was the particular quiet of it's finally this moment. Everyone was still in their seats. Terminals lit. Indicators lit.

The new course on the main display lay quiet across the star chart — a white line cut into the black like a single clean stroke. And yet, because everyone was still here, all the equipment still running, all the procedures still intact, the unreality of it was heavier for it. We hadn't stopped thinking about going home along the way. It was just that before, it had been something we said to keep going. Now it was starting to feel real.

"Roy, begin setting the new course." Ash's voice came down — not deliberately raised, not deliberately lowered — and the bridge cleaned itself of noise around it. This man came factory-equipped with a gravitational field that said this is not the time for small talk. Infuriating. Useful.

"Yes, sir." Roy pressed both hands onto the helm console. The new course parameters opened one by one; blue-white navigation frames pulled correction lines across the main display, like someone stitching a seam through the star chart — a careful line back. At the same time, Ash turned to the comm window on the secondary screen.

"Harvey. That's all for now. If the Kamikaze has any problems — any at all — tell me immediately." … Any problems. I almost looked up at Ash. From anyone else, that line might have sounded like poetry, or the kind of thing someone says half-drunk at two in the morning. From Ash, it sounded exactly like what it was — he was treating the Kamikaze as a heart, and anyone who let it develop an arrhythmia was going to find their own life developing serious irregularities shortly after.

Harvey pushed his heat-shield drape up on his shoulder. The background behind him was the engine room's permanent state: always one step from exploding, somehow never quite getting there.

"Got it." He answered, no extra words, no clowning, and cut the channel. That, more than any number of jokes, confirmed the technical situation was not joking around. Harvey behaving like a normal technician meant the technical side genuinely wasn't in the mood.

"New course set." Roy's report followed quickly. I glanced at him. When he'd first come aboard, the man had looked at the helm like it was a beast waiting to bite his arm off. A few months of practical hell later, he was a different person. Not more impressive-looking — warships weren't idol factories, no such luck — but there was a new steadiness. Hands falling without hesitation where they needed to go. Some people grow up by learning to speak like adults.

Some people grow up by finally not shaking their hands when it counts. The second kind is usually more useful. After confirming the coordinates, Ash reached for the wall-mounted comm handset. He didn't rush it. Didn't slow it down either. But for some reason, the moment his hand closed around the receiver, my spine locked. Shipwide broadcast was the act of saying a thought out loud to the whole ship at once. And once said out loud, it stopped being just a thought.

"This is Acting Captain Ash Vander, Third-Class Captain." His voice spread through the shipwide system — steady, clean, no decoration.

"To avoid placing additional strain on the FTL engine, this vessel will proceed via segmented FTL transit." The course segment diagram appeared on the right side of the main display. Lan immediately cleared the comm channels, keeping only essential internal loops. Akari's tactical markers lit up one by one, boxing in our current position in the sector, the planned entry window, and the correction lane post-exit.

Jess, beside me, bent over the tactical board and cross-checked at a speed that suggested she was born to catch other people's typos. I didn't want to compliment her. But the fact was, this woman was looking more and more like she actually belonged in that deputy seat. Ash continued:"First leg: this vessel will travel approximately forty-five million light-years." He paused.

"With some luck, we will enter the first major stellar-density region of the Virgo Supercluster's outer filament structure. That is all." Broadcast over. The bridge returned to the state of equipment hum and human voices. Those few sentences were like a stone dropped into water — nothing visible on the surface, but the whole ship already rippling outward underneath. Forty-five million light-years.

The first thought that jumped into my head was: If you tried to file a travel-reimbursement claim for that distance, administration would reject it for failure to attach a return ticket stub. A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. The second thought was: We're actually jumping.

"All hands, prepare for FTL transit. Executive Officer—""Understood." Maki took the order before it had fully landed. She picked up the wall handset, voice not loud, but precise as metal on metal.

"All hands, attention. FTL transit alert is now issued. All personnel, report to stations immediately and confirm safety restraints." I didn't look back at her. But just hearing that voice told me: Maki Kushima was in good condition today. Which meant: cold, steady, exact — and if you gave her so much as half a unit of additional trouble right now, she would very politely send you somewhere you wouldn't enjoy.

"Bridge personnel, confirm safety restraints." Click. Click. Click. A sequence of locking sounds ran through the bridge — clean, crisp, like an ensemble that knew each other well but was performing something that didn't have a cheerful ending. I bent and pressed my waist restraint into position, then confirmed the tactical station's safety harness. Jess finished her own check and reached over to press down the slightly raised latch on my right side.

"This one didn't seat."

"…I have hands."

"I know," she said quietly.

"But right now half your brain is on the course and the other half is performing calm. Your hands might not have the bandwidth."

"Shut up."

"Hey." She dragged a short, innocent syllable out, expression entirely guileless, and succeeded in generating the very specific urge in me to confiscate her tactical board. Unfortunately, this wasn't the time for internal conflict. A shame.

"Bridge, safety restraints confirmed." Maki reported. Aida switched her monitoring board to dual main-and-auxiliary mode. Kamikaze output, FTL coil sync rate, hull frame stress, inertial compensation readiness — all of it lit across her displays. She adjusted her glasses and delivered her assessment in a tone that was approximately as warm as a lab result printout.

"Technical side confirmed. Kamikaze output stable, primary supply not fluctuating. One reminder: if anyone wants to vomit within thirty seconds of FTL ignition, please use the bag. Do not use my freshly calibrated control panel." Roy said, quietly: "Understood." Lan added: "Comm channels sealed. Internal loops stable. All external communications are effectively nonexistent during transit. If anyone has a sudden urge to contact someone out in the universe, please hold that thought."

"You should say that to Jess," I murmured. Jess turned immediately: "Why me? Do I look like someone who sends love letters during FTL?" I looked at her.

"You look like someone who'd write a will during FTL, with editorial commentary."

"That just means I have literary sensibility."

"That means something is wrong with you." Right in the middle of this entirely inappropriate low-volume exchange, Ash finally turned his gaze toward the helm.

"Mr. Hartmann." Roy looked up. Ash's tone was measured. And carrying, with great restraint, a particular quality — the kind of courtesy a commanding officer rarely produces.

"Take us out." Beside me, Jess immediately angled toward me like a cat that had just caught a rumor.

"Is he doing an impression of some famous Federal captain?" she whispered. I stared straight ahead, expression blank.

"Shut up."

"Hey—""One more word and I'm reclassifying your deputy clearance to hot-water retrieval only."

"That's not a demotion, that's a promotion." … How this woman maintained this level of verbal output while the entire ship was preparing for FTL transit was genuinely beyond me. In some ways, it might have been a gift. Roy paid no attention to our whispered crimes. His hand settled steady on the engine order telegraph, and then he pushed it all the way forward in one smooth motion. The next second, the whole Yukikaze shuddered. Not the way the old Next-Gen Controlled Thermonuclear Fusion Boiler used to shudder.

Not heavy, not lumbering, not the mechanical equivalent of sorry everyone, I'm old, please be patient. This vibration was finer, faster — like something deep in the hull being pressed to a threshold all at once, and then the whole system lighting up along every pathway at the same time.

I could almost picture it: in the engine room, the Helium-Hydrogen Power Plant's hydrogen elements being rapidly pressurized into a super-ionic state; energy pathways that had been invisible before now glowing like veins, one inch at a time, until they locked into the Kamikaze's core pulse. Not the salvaged life of something patched together and dragged to today. This was a new heart. Aida read the numbers fast:"Primary plant pressure rise normal. FTL coil sync rate at ninety-six… ninety-eight… ninety-nine.

Inertial compensation in position." Akari watched the overlaid radar and tactical display, voice quick and exact as always.

"Forward sector clear. Exit vector stable. Gravity noise within tolerance." Lan added: "Internal loops normal. No anomalous feedback." Maki kept her eyes forward — and at the moment all the data converged, said three words, very short:"Clear to jump." Three words without weight. But they nailed down the last trace of hesitation in the whole ship. The next second, the three-light indicator panel at the helm lit up in sequence. First: primary drive ready. Second: FTL coil locked. Third: jump window open, confirmed.

Three lights, quiet in the dark, like the universe had decided, for once, to nod. Roy drew a breath.

"FTL transit — initiating." He pressed the button. And then that feeling came. Time seemed to stop for just an instant. Not literary exaggeration — genuinely, the kind where your brain hasn't finished deciding what's happening and your body has already been temporarily put on mute by the laws of physics. Then the whole thing came at once, like being shoved underwater. Not pain. Not even pressure, exactly.

More like you and the entire ship were grabbed by something unreasonably large, and pulled long in a direction that shouldn't exist. On the main display, the stars distorted and stretched into threads. Every secured fixture on the bridge let out a single, faint harmonic. Something deep in the eardrums snapped once, and even breathing fell half a beat behind. The Yukikaze was pulled to her limit. Like a rubber band. Like a sentence held back too long.

Like a heart that had finally been pushed to the point where it had no choice but to beat. Then— Snap. The ship came free of where she'd been and vanished. No smoke. No fire. No cheap dramatic burst of light. Just the deeply unreasonable, stomach-protesting weightlessness, and then the main display stabilizing a moment later onto a completely different sky. I gripped the armrest until system tones began coming back online one by one, and only then realized I'd been holding my breath.

"…"

"…" Two seconds of silence on the bridge. Then the first person to speak was not Ash, not Maki, not anyone who should have been responsible for making this historic moment sound like a historic moment. It was Jess. She stared forward, expression serious, tone serious.

"Honestly, that was more like drowning than I expected." I ground my teeth and let the breath out.

"Shut up first."

"But I'm making a literary record."

"Your literary record can go to hell." This time even Roy laughed — very quietly. Short enough to miss if you weren't watching. But I saw it. And in that moment, I suddenly understood why this jump mattered — not only because we'd finally made point-to-point FTL real. But because in this moment, the Yukikaze didn't feel like a ship barely holding herself together anymore. She felt like a ship that was actually going to bring us home. The new star chart opened ahead, inch by inch.

The first major stellar-density region of the Virgo Supercluster's outer filament structure surfaced quietly in the depths of the main display — like someone in the dark had finally lit a light in the distance, but unkindly refused to light the whole path at once, leaving just enough to make you walk toward it yourself. I looked at that new sky, the ghost of the FTL transit still echoing through my body. And then I noticed I was smiling. Very faintly.

Faintly enough that probably only Jess, sitting right next to me, would catch it. She caught it.

"Hey, Hoshino."

"What."

"Did you just smile?" Blank face.

"No."

"You did."

"You're mistaken."

"I'm not, because that expression looked like—""Jess." The interruption didn't come from me. It came from Maki. She sat at the executive officer's station, didn't turn around, just dropped one mild line:"If the tactical deputy has too much free time, I can assign you additional post-transit log consolidation." Jess went immediately quiet. She stayed quiet for about two seconds, then said, very softly, in my direction:"See. She's so natural about shutting you down now."

I nearly brought the terminal down on her head. I couldn't. We were mid-FTL. And honestly — She wasn't entirely wrong.