Chương 334: 142.Fujimaru Incident 2

We linked up with the civilian ship soon after. An exterior feed popped up on the right side of the main screen. Small hull, plain paint job, two obvious scorch marks along the port side. It looked exactly like an ordinary civilian vessel that had run into extraordinarily bad luck. —Assuming you were willing to believe the Imperial Navy would deploy three destroyers for an ordinary civilian ship.

"This is the Federal destroyer Yukikaze." Lan's voice was steady, as if we hadn't just blown two Imperial destroyers out of the sky.

"Your vessel is clear of immediate threat. Please report ship name, registry, damage status, and crew manifest." Two seconds of silence came back. Not a dropped signal. The kind of silence where someone on the other end is arguing in a hushed voice, careful not to let us hear. I frowned. Shouldn't a normal civilian crew's first reaction, once rescued, be crying, or thanking us, or babbling something incoherent? But there was none of that. The silence on the other end sounded far too much like a meeting in progress.

Finally, a man's voice came through—hoarse, but every word steady.

"This is the civilian transport Fujimaru... We request medical assistance, and request that your vessel provide short-range escort." The request was completely ordinary. Ordinary enough that it felt deliberate. Lan didn't answer right away. She just cut her eyes toward Ash. Maki had already signaled her to keep going.

"Please provide your crew manifest." The pause from the other side ran longer this time. Long enough that I could almost picture someone on that ship glaring at someone else. When the man finally spoke again, his voice had dropped noticeably.

"... Apologies. We cannot provide the crew manifest on an open channel." Nobody on the bridge said anything. But in that instant, every expression changed. I stared at the civilian ship, and felt a thin layer of cold creep up the back of my neck. Civilian ship. Requesting escort. Refusing to name its crew. Right. Even I was starting to feel embarrassed still calling it an ordinary civilian ship.

"Akari," Maki said.

"Here." Akari's fingers swept across her panel.

"Running structural scan... anomaly detected. The third compartment amidships is reinforced, with a dual isolation layer inside. That's not a standard cargo configuration." Jess let out a low whistle.

"Skin of a transport, bones of a vault. Whoever's aboard travels in style." Lan added, almost on top of her:"The encrypted handshake they just sent back isn't civilian format. It's a Federal Foreign Service protection sequence." At that, even I wanted to laugh. Not because it was funny. It was the kind of laugh that surfaces when a situation gets so thoroughly complicated that cold amusement is all you have left. So that was it. The Imperial Navy hadn't been robbing anyone. They'd been running a blockade.

And that third destroyer hadn't fled because it was afraid to die. It ran because the job was blown, and it needed to carry the news home. On the main screen, the civilian ship kept drifting quietly in the nebula's light bands — battered enough to look like a victim, silent enough to feel like an unexploded bomb. Then the man spoke again. This time, every word sounded like it was being forced out from between his teeth.

"Acting Captain of the Yukikaze... I am requesting an encrypted ship-to-ship dedicated line." He paused.

"There is a person aboard this vessel whose name cannot be given on an open channel." The bridge went still for half a second. Not the kind of stillness where everyone's too shocked to speak. The kind where everyone finishes the same sentence in their head, at the same moment — Of course. Ash didn't so much as twitch an eyebrow. He just said, flatly:"Lan. Open an encrypted dedicated line."

"Copy." Lan's fingers slid across her panel, clean enough that she might as well have been adding a second dessert to tonight's dinner order, not opening a high-clearance encrypted backchannel for a suspicious civilian ship. A new identification sequence blinked up on the right side of the main screen. The open channel's green light died, replaced by a low-key, almost neurotic blue-white lock ring.

"Ship-to-ship encrypted line establishing," Lan said.

"Handshake verified. Clearance level — Federal Foreign Service, Class A or above." Jess let out a very soft whistle.

"Wow. That's not a civilian ship anymore. That's a civilian ship cosplaying as one."

"Quiet," Maki said. Her tone was still flat — but not the same flat she'd used calling battle stations. More like a blade sliding back into its sheath without the hand ever leaving the hilt. She glanced sideways at Ash. Ash nodded.

"Patch it through." A second later, the open channel cut. Only the encrypted line shared between the captain's chair, the XO's station, and comms stayed lit. Strictly speaking, this was the moment I should have demonstrated mature officer professionalism — eyes front, focused on the surrounding sector, radiating discretion about classified comms. Unfortunately, I'm fourteen, and I'd just climbed out of a Zero cockpit still smelling like gunpowder.

So my professional discretion stretched exactly far enough to keep me from physically craning my neck over Lan's console. On the main screen, the Fujimaru's exterior feed still floated quietly. The two scorch marks along her port side stood out sharply against the nebula's silver-blue reflection, conspicuous enough to look like wounds left there on purpose.

She still looked like an extraordinarily unlucky civilian ship — provided you threw your brain out first and didn't ask why the Empire had been willing to send three destroyers after her. On the encrypted line, the man spoke again. His voice was lower now, and far more formal. Whatever thin veneer of I'm just a tired crewman he'd worn on the open channel had peeled away completely.

What was left was harder to name — but I'd seen it before, on upperclassmen at the Academy who were terrified out of their minds and working very hard not to show it. Restraint.

"Acting Captain of the Yukikaze, forgive my earlier lack of clarity," the man said.

"The escort subject is not part of the Federal military or governmental hierarchy, but a special protection target currently being transferred under the diplomatic protection clauses of the Galactic Federation's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Public identification is not possible at present, nor is entry into standard border-station registration advisable." I heard Jess make a very soft hah. Not a laugh. The exhale that means: right, so this isn't ordinary trouble. Ash's voice didn't shift at all.

"Nature of the case." Two seconds of silence from the other end. This time it didn't sound like hushed arguing. It sounded like someone running through a final internal checklist. Then the man delivered a single sentence.

"Galactic Federation Ministry of Foreign Affairs, special transfer case. The subject is on the diplomatic protection list — not a senior Federal official." The whole bridge went still for a beat. I stared at the civilian ship's image and felt my stomach drop, honestly and simply.... Right. It really wasn't civilian anymore. And somehow, this was worse than "senior Federal official."

If it were some big name out of the Assembly, the trouble would at least have a visible shape — meetings, orders, accountability, blame passed around, maybe a few men in suits smiling at you insincerely. Diplomatic trouble is different. It comes wrapped beautifully, speaks with impeccable manners, and by the time you notice what's happening, your whole ship has already been folded into somebody else's international relations. Maki spoke first.

"That explains why the Empire sent destroyers directly." Her voice stayed just as level as always, but the line landed less like an order and more like a ruling entered into the record. Not pirates. Not a random raid. Not a border security incident. A diplomatic assassination. Jess leaned against the secondary console and laughed, low.

"Told you. Three destroyers chasing one civilian ship — that's not a robbery. That's someone in a hurry to make sure a person who really shouldn't disappear, disappears." Lan, still holding the encrypted line, added:"The Foreign Service protection sequence they sent is genuine. No sign of forgery. And —" she paused, as if reading a newly decrypted authorization suffix "— it's not standard consular or trade-protection grade.

It's closer to a special security chain issued directly by the Ministry, co-signed by the Border Diplomatic Security Office." Even Roy looked up from the helm at that.

"So what we just shot down wasn't three destroyers acting on impulse," he said.

"Correct." Akari's eyes stayed on the scan data, fingers flying.

"And the third one pulled out too clean. It wasn't running scared. It was running home to report that the Fujimaru is still alive, and has made contact with the Yukikaze." I knew it. That ugly chill along my spine hadn't been my imagination. Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon. If the third ship had simply routed, that would've been an ending. If it had gone home to report — that was an opening move. I looked at the Fujimaru and let out a quiet, private laugh.

So that was it. We hadn't stumbled into a border robbery. We'd stepped straight into a diplomatic hit that was supposed to finish quietly in the dark — and pried the one piece they most needed gone right out from between their teeth. Ash spoke.

"Status of the escort subject." The man answered fast this time, like he'd finally reached a part of the report he was allowed to give plainly.

"Not in immediate danger, but the Fujimaru's port side has taken damage. Two wounded in the medical bay. One escort incapacitated. Our navigation module and long-range comms are partially offline. We cannot complete safe extraction independently." Aida cut in, dry as ever.

"Damage like that, and it's still holding together. This ship's got a stubborn kind of luck." I almost laughed out loud. Only our Chief Engineer could deliver someone else's near-death situation with the same detached interest she'd use to comment on boiler lifespan. It had a way of yanking you straight back to reality. The man either hadn't heard her, or had no bandwidth left to wonder why everyone on this bridge apparently skipped the module on normal human communication. He just kept his voice low.

"Acting Captain, I formally request close escort for the Fujimaru, and priority medical transfer." A beat.

"Additionally —" He hesitated.

"Until we reach an official Federal border reception facility, we would prefer that no third party learn the true identity of the person aboard this vessel." When that sentence landed, the full weight of the situation finally settled onto the bridge. Not because the content was shocking. Because he'd said it plainly now: this wasn't rescue-and-done. We were being asked to take custody of a secret. And on a Federal warship, secret usually means one of two things. Trouble. Or a great deal of trouble.

Jess murmured to me:"Shimo, I'm suddenly feeling nostalgic for those three destroyers."

"Yeah." I kept my eyes on the Fujimaru.

"At least those blew us up from the outside." Jess's shoulders twitched like a laugh trying to escape, then she forced it back down. Maki had already stepped half a pace forward, just behind and to the side of Ash. She didn't look at me, but something about that half-step felt like an answer on its own. Translation: fine — border skirmish is over, formal-trouble procedure starts now. Ash was quiet for a few seconds. Not hesitating.

More like running a fast internal audit of everything that could blow up from here — the Fujimaru, the third destroyer that had peeled off to report, the border station, the protection sequence, the unnamed passenger. Any one of those alone was already annoying. Tied together, they might as well have painted a banner across the bridge ceiling: Congratulations, Yukikaze. You've won again. Then Ash spoke.

"The Yukikaze accepts the escort request." On the Fujimaru's end, it sounded like the whole ship exhaled at once. No obvious static on the line, but I could almost picture it — someone sinking back into a chair, someone whispering thank god, someone finally setting down a sidearm that probably wouldn't have done much good anyway. Ash's next line nailed that breath straight back into procedure.

"From here, my ship leads. The Fujimaru maintains minimum maneuverability, shuts down all active external transmission, and retains only the encrypted navigation link with the Yukikaze. No one transmits on public border channels without authorization. Can you comply?" The man didn't hesitate.

"We can."

"Good." Ash said.

"Lan, push the nav lock. Roy, take close guidance of the Fujimaru. Akari, resweep the vector the third destroyer withdrew along. Aida, prep medical reception and damage assessment. Maki, escort protocol."

"Aye."

"Copy."

"Understood." The orders landed, and the bridge came back to life. That was the maddening, and completely reliable, thing about the Yukikaze. Most days, everyone talked to each other like they'd been raised to actively resent social convention. But the moment something real dropped on our heads, every one of them clicked into place like gears that had never particularly wanted to mesh — but once engaged, didn't slip. I watched the Fujimaru's icon slide into our escort formation and had one very plain thought.

The trip home really wasn't going to give us a break. We'd survived the Sea Wolf, burned through an entire FTL transit — by any fair accounting the universe owed us five minutes of nothing. Instead, it apparently decided that would be a disservice to the Yukikaze's track record, and dropped a ship carrying a classified diplomatic subject, trailing an Imperial interception operation, directly into our lap in the border nebula.... Perfect. I ran back over the tactical grid and gave the day a fair internal summary.

We hadn't come back to the Federal border. We'd hauled the single most sensitive, most untouchable, most already-touched-by-us piece of it directly aboard. We were still processing their requests when the encrypted line rang again. Not the polite chime of a routine incoming call — more like a courteous knock that usually precedes something you don't want to hear. Several people looked up at once. Ash didn't think twice; he gestured to Lan to connect. The comm window lit on the right side of the main screen.

The same man. Except now his color had gotten worse. Not simple pallor — the specific ugliness of someone who'd nailed composure onto his face so hard that the effort made the disaster underneath obvious. Behind him, warning lights flickered at the frame's edge, and a thin haze of white smoke drifted past. Like the Fujimaru had finally decided to stop pretending she was a ship that could shrug off a few scratches.

"Acting Captain..." His voice was still held steady, but dry at the edges now.

"I've just re-inspected the hull. Damage to the propulsion section is worse than my earlier report indicated. If we continue under power —" He didn't finish. He didn't need to. It's like a doctor saying let's talk. The sentence itself was never the point — the point is you already know nothing good comes next. Ash didn't fill the pause. He just turned his head.

"Aida?" Aida didn't lift her eyes. Her gaze stayed locked on the Fujimaru's scan data as her fingers tapped through several sections, pulling the propulsion bay's heat map up onto the sidebar.

"Scanning," she said. A few seconds later, she delivered the verdict, calm as ever.

"Unsafe for continued transit. Primary coolant lines in the propulsion section show secondary damage. Attitude control is unstable. Tow risk is excessive — forcing it will only turn a small accident into a large one." She paused, then added something closer to a ruling than a report.

"Put simply — the Fujimaru isn't a ship anymore. It's a problem barely holding a ship's shape." Jess let out a soft "wow."

"Chief, you have a real gift for bad news."

"Engineering assessment doesn't need a gift," Aida said coldly.

"It needs the relevant parties not to die in the wrong place." I stared at the heat map, and the bad feeling in my gut dropped another notch. A minute ago this was a diplomatic mess. Now it was a diplomatic mess plus casualties plus classified cargo plus a ship about to stop being a ship. The universe was genuinely worried the Yukikaze might get bored today. Ash nodded, and looked back to the man on the screen.

"Understood." His voice was steady to the point of sounding almost heartless.

"Our recommendation: transfer personnel and classified material. Scuttle the Fujimaru." The man didn't hesitate for even a second. That, more than any visible panic, told you exactly how bad it was. So long as someone still felt sorry for their ship, still cared about the asset, still wanted to argue the paperwork, it meant they still had room to think of the Fujimaru as a ship. He didn't. He treated her strictly as mission packaging — used up, and due to be discarded.

"Understood," he said quietly.

"I'll begin preparing the shuttles and transfer manifest immediately." The line closed. The screen went dark, and the particular atmosphere of all right, nobody has to pretend this isn't that bad anymore settled more heavily over the bridge. Ash didn't waste a second. He turned straight to Maki.

"XO."

"Here."

"Have Sergeant Takenaka send a team to the hangar. Armed. Search and screen. Full intake — no shortcuts."

"Understood. On it." Maki already had the internal line in hand, and the moment it connected her voice went crisp and clean, like she was hammering nails into a wall.

"Takenaka. Hangar bay, Level-Two reception protocol. Take six, split into two teams. One handles docking and perimeter security, the other conducts boarding inspection. Everyone coming aboard the Yukikaze is processed as a classified-intake subject. Move now." I couldn't see Takenaka's face on the other end, but judging by the tone Maki used — the ask one unnecessary question and I will strangle you through this line tone — I'd bet his answer over there was exactly one word: Yes.

Roy was already adjusting our relative heading.

"Docking window opens in three minutes," he said.

"I'm bringing us up on the Fujimaru's forward-port quarter, clear of the damaged machinery block. As long as their shuttle crew doesn't get creative, the angle's safe."

"Lan, maintain secure comms," Ash said.

"Maintained." Lan didn't look up.

"Public border channel's carrying minimum rescue-format traffic only. No subject ID, no operational details, no lucky-winner announcement."

"Thank you for that last part," I muttered.

"Confirms our communications officer hasn't given up on her sense of humor." Lan glanced over at me, expression perfectly proper.

"A sense of humor is standard life-support equipment."

"Then Jess's is probably an unauthorized modification."

"Objection." Jess's hand shot up.

"This is a high-performance factory-spec model."

"You're more like an aftermarket build that never cleared inspection." A short laugh moved around the bridge. Very short. Like cracking a pressure valve for half a second. But that half-second was enough to put my shoulders back where they belonged. If I let the smell of diplomatic trouble keep climbing up into my skull, I was going to burn through my entire lifetime quota of misanthropy before I even laid eyes on the "person who cannot be named." The Fujimaru moved fast.

On the main screen, the small civilian ship began opening up, layer by layer, like a shell finally accepting its fate. External running lights dropped to low, main drive went dark, only the attitude thrusters occasionally correcting her hull. That wasn't the posture of a ship preparing to keep flying. It was the posture of a ship that had already accepted its only two remaining futures — towed, or disposed of. When the shuttle detached from her belly, Akari's fingers paused on the panel.

"Two craft," she said.

"One personnel, one cargo."

"Reasonable," Aida said flatly.

"This kind of situation, people and secrets usually travel separate. Less chance they both go up at once." The Chief Engineer's version of reassurance was always, reliably, running in the opposite direction from normal human comfort. Once the transfer began, the bridge got quieter. Because the thing that actually rattles you is never the shooting. It's this — knowing perfectly well you're deep in dangerous territory, and all you can do is watch the procedure tick forward one item at a time.

Gunfire at least gives you a clear enemy. Diplomatic trouble doesn't. It grows on its own. I watched the Fujimaru, and something I couldn't quite name settled over me. Honestly, I had no attachment to that ship. Before today she hadn't existed anywhere in my life. Five minutes ago she was just mission packaging that nearly got torn open by Imperial gunfire. But watching her now — unloading people, cargo, secrets, one piece at a time — I couldn't shake the sense of something being hollowed out.

Like someone who'd held on just long enough to hand over what mattered most, and could finally let go.

"Fujimaru transfer at seventy percent," Lan reported.

"Two wounded aboard," Aida said.

"Medical's got them. One escort unstable, the other reasonably intact — for someone in that line of work."

"Classified material?" Maki asked.

"Second shuttle's entering the bay," Akari said.

"The container's multi-layer shielded. Scans won't get through." Jess whistled softly.

"I'm starting to enjoy today a little." I looked at her sideways.

"In a mystery novel, you'd be the weird one who dies early."

"And you?"

"The wisecracking bystander who survives too long because she's too good at wisecracking."

"No, no." Jess's grin turned genuinely nasty.

"You're the type trouble can't stop sticking to." I had no comeback for that. Today's evidence made it pretty clear the universe took an unhealthy amount of interest in me personally. At the final stage of transfer, the Fujimaru sent one last status confirmation. Personnel offloaded. Injured and escorts delivered. Classified material sealed and handed over. Core data partially wiped, per their own request. Final safety interlocks on the main reactor and attitude systems disengaged.

In other words, the Fujimaru was no longer a civilian ship carrying a secret. She was an empty shell that had just finished handing hers over. Ash listened to the full report without much comment, then asked one thing.

"Disposal authorization confirmed?" Lan checked the encrypted chain and nodded.

"Fujimaru confirms abandonment of vessel, and authorizes this ship to execute neutralization disposal."

"Good," Ash said. Not loud. But it landed like a stamp coming down on the last page of a file.

"Yukikaze, execute post-scuttling neutralization disposal on the Fujimaru. No recoverable wreckage for third-party salvage." No one on the bridge showed any excess expression. Because everyone knew this was right. We couldn't take her with us. We couldn't leave her. And we couldn't let the Empire come back to pick the shell apart. So the only thing left was to send her off clean.

"Weapon selection?" I asked. Ash watched the Fujimaru on the screen — mostly dark now, just an outline in the nebula's light.

"Keep it simple," he said.

"Don't make her suffer twice."... The Acting Captain is genuinely a pain sometimes. Most days he looks like someone who couldn't be bothered to learn a single comforting sentence. Then exactly in a moment like this, he'll drop a line that doesn't belong in any warship manual — and lands so precisely you can't argue with it. I didn't answer. I just switched weapons to the simplest, cleanest option available.

"Turret One, Tristan mode," I said. Jess glanced over and said nothing. She knew, same as I did. This wasn't a moment for beams, and it wasn't a moment for anything with symbolic weight. Just one clean, decisive round to send an empty hull on its way.

"Lock complete," I said quietly. The Fujimaru sat still at the center of the screen. Small hull. Plain paint. Two scorch marks along the port side. She still looked like an unlucky ship. Except now, everything that had made her unlucky was already gone. What was left was just a skin that needed erasing.

"Tristan, fire." The main gun discharged. No drama about it. One round was enough. The kinetic penetrator bit into the Fujimaru's midsection, and a heartbeat later she seemed to remember she'd been meaning to fall apart for a while now — folding cleanly from the inside. Not cruel. Not spectacular. Just a very orderly ending. Hull cracked, then split, then tumbled slowly into pieces that had stopped mattering, drifting silent into the border nebula's silver-violet light. No one on the bridge spoke.

I watched the Fujimaru vanish from the screen, and a thought crossed my mind, almost embarrassingly simple — that the luckiest thing that happened to her all day was probably meeting the Yukikaze at the end of it. At least she hadn't gone down with her secret still inside her, torn open by the Empire. She'd handed over what she carried, and ended clean. Maki broke the silence first.

"Hangar status." The internal line answered at once. Takenaka's team had sealed the docking area. The wounded were already routed to medical. Escorts and attendants had cleared the first round of screening. The last group was still holding at the ramp — waiting to bring down the one person who needed to be handled separately.

"Good," Maki said. She ended the call and turned to Ash.

"They're here." The air on the bridge tightened, just slightly. Not from fear. Because for the first time, all of it — the comms, the procedures, the titles, the protection chains — was about to become one specific, actual person. Jess leaned toward me, dropping her voice.

"Want to bet?"

"On what."

"On whether this diplomatic headache turns out to be an untouchable, otherworldly beauty, or the kind of high-class nightmare who sends the soup back for being too salty." I looked at her, deadpan.

"How can you still have this level of low-grade curiosity at a time like this?"

"Because tension makes your face ugly."

"Relax. You were never winning on poise anyway." Jess nearly laughed out loud, then bit it back. I dragged my eyes back to the front. The hangar's secondary feed had come up. Lights white and clean. Boarding ramp locked. Takenaka's people fanned out on both sides, medics and security in position. The neatness of it had the quality of a ritual — not an elaborate one, but everyone there knew they were receiving a complication, not a guest. Ash stood. Maki stepped forward at the same moment.

I don't know why, but my fingers curled slightly against the edge of the console. I hadn't been this on edge when Imperial destroyers were washing our tail with missiles. Now something had drawn tight across my chest, thin as wire. Probably because gunfire, at least, is simple. People are always worse. On the hangar feed, the shuttle's hatch began, slowly, to open.