Chương 339: 145.Propaganda Funeral 1

In the end, it was Ash who closed the matter out. Not by slamming the table. Not by raising his voice. He just patched the internal line into the warehouse and, with that voice of his that always sounded flat as the ship's central keel, put everyone back exactly where he wanted them. Hedwig and her retinue would be temporarily housed in a small, self-contained section on the mid-deck, starboard side.

That section had originally served as a standby area for transient personnel and a supply buffer zone — two doors in between, a narrow outer corridor, clean sightlines, and only one main point of entry. Politely put, it was easy to protect. Bluntly put, it was extremely easy to watch. Both hatch locks would be re-keyed to restricted access.

The outer corridor would carry a rotating security detail — not the crude method of shoving a rifle in someone's face, but standard, almost courteous Federal shipboard interior security: bodies present, logs kept, medical care, meals, comms, and sanitation provided as needed. Their range of movement, however, would not be their own to decide. Simply translated: Welcome aboard. Please don't wander.

The kind of please don't wander that would come with a sixteen-page appendix, drafted in very elegant official language. Hedwig didn't say much after hearing it. I'd half-expected her to take that cold, well-bred blade of hers and run it lightly across Ash's orders at least once. She didn't. She just listened to the end, then nodded — the way you'd say: fine, since you're at least minimally competent, I won't waste time on low-grade resistance.

It was her lady's maid — or rather, the person shaped like a maid but functioning more like a high-grade hazardous asset capable of folding someone into three sections and mopping the floor dry afterward — whose eyes moved, just once. Very slight. But I caught it. Not dissatisfaction. Professional calculation: door placement, corridor length, guard rotation tempo, surveillance blind spots, emergency exfil routes. I quietly lit a candle in my head for that corridor.

If security ever dared to doze off in there, they'd probably wake up at the bottom of the ship, hog-tied into the shape of a folding chair. As for Hedwig herself, she looked back at us once before stepping out of the warehouse. Not a long look. Maki first, then Aida, then a brief sweep over to me. The line of her mouth moved, very faintly.

"I hope the Federation's road home turns out a little more civilized than the Empire's welcome." I almost laughed. Jess didn't even try to hold it — she turned her head away on the spot, shoulders shaking like someone had just shoved a mouthful of over-spiced field rations down her throat. Maki answered, deadpan:"That depends on whether Your Highness is willing to cooperate with civilized society's schedule." Beautiful. I'd bet anything that wasn't just a reminder not to wander the corridors at night.

When Maki talks like that, the surface is always daily-life management. Underneath, it's always a knife. Hedwig said nothing else. She left with her maid. The moment the door shut, it felt like someone had quietly vacuumed a layer of invisible pressure out of the warehouse. I could finally breathe normally. First thing out of my mouth:"I just realized trading fire with those Imperial destroyers outside was probably the easier part of today." Jess nodded immediately.

"At least the ones outside just shoot at you. They don't slice you into pieces with their tone first."

"You'd know."

"I was very invested from the sidelines." Maki stood, not even bothering to look at us.

"Invested enough that when we get back to the bridge, you're turning everything that just happened into a formal report. Not one line missing." Half of Jess's face collapsed on the spot.

"... XO, you have a real gift for ruining a good time."

"Thank you."

"That wasn't a compliment."

"I know." Aida closed her datapad and stood. The moment that expression crossed her face — this part's done, now there are ten more forms and twenty more clearances to file — I knew. Romance, drama, princesses, assassination plots, diplomacy — in the end, all of it gets ground back down to the most honest, most brutal essence of the Federal military: Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. Paperwork. That's the one enemy nobody ever beats.

By the time we got back to the bridge, the Yukikaze had already shifted into return-transit procedures.

"Got back to the bridge" already carried the flavor of an incident's closing scene. Because none of us were sitting in the seat that was actually ours. Or more precisely — We were all still holding borrowed posts. Ash still in the acting captain's chair. Maki still acting XO. Jess still radiating that thoroughly punchable I only came to watch and somehow ended up owning half the ship's workload energy at the tactical station, undiminished. Lan still locked onto comms and identification.

Roy — the kind of man who treats attitude control and course correction like breathing — still had a firm grip on the Yukikaze's bones. Aida still patching engineering and politics simultaneously, quietly confirming whether this ship still lived under normal universal law. Every one of us was still borrowing a seat.

Like a makeshift performance that had run too long — the cast exhausted, the audience long overdue to go home, but the lights still up and the curtain still not fallen, so everyone kept playing roles that weren't theirs, all the way to the end. It was a strange feeling. Ash didn't waste words from the captain's chair. Just a few short orders: Hedwig and her retinue's temporary quarters, formally unsealed. Outer corridor security on rotation — roster and shift intervals encrypted, not broadcast.

Ship-to-exterior comm clearance re-tiered; all records touching the Fujimaru and the Imperial Princess sealed independently. Yukikaze stands down from combat-compressed posture, resumes mid-range cruise configuration. Primary heading: the Capital Ring system. That was it. No speech. No good work, everyone. None of the pretty lines that would fit a soundtrack but that nobody actually has time to listen to when things are still busy. Because it still wasn't time to relax. We were just back on the road.

Roy straightened the track, feeding power back in steadily. The Yukikaze moved like a beast finally pulling its feet free of the mud — a tentative step forward first, then slowly finding her rhythm again. I glanced back at the main screen. The starfield outside wasn't the same anonymous deep space that made you think if I died out here, nobody would ever know. Maybe it was psychological.

We still had a long way to go, and Capital Ring system was still far off — but the instant the ship's systems formally marked the Federation's jurisdictional line, even the starlight suddenly looked a little familiar. A stupid feeling. But real. Like being lost for a long time, stumbling back toward the edge of your own neighborhood — you can't see your front door yet, but you catch the smell of fried food from the corner store mixed with fabric softener from the laundromat downstairs.

People are pathetic like that. Warships aren't much different. Then the signals came. Military IFF first. One, two, three. Patrol ships. Border watch stations. Relay nav-buoys. Automated Federal route warnings. The response codes stacked up on the board like frost creeping back across a winter window, line by line, writing this is regulated space back into the world in front of us. Then civilian signals. Freighters. Passenger liners. Medical-lane right-of-way requests. Commercial tug frequencies.

Regional port authority auto-broadcasts. Then, further in, even the open public bands started bleeding through in fragments.

"— at fourteen hundred today, bean futures across the outer capital agri-belts —""— the Eastern Systems Transit Commission reminds all travelers that due to recent border exercises —""— and now, a classic oldies retrospective for our listeners —" I froze. Then, suddenly, I wanted to laugh. Not because any of it was interesting. Because it was so ordinary. Ordinary to the point of absurdity. Ordinary enough to sting behind the nose.

A few hours ago I was in the Zero's cockpit, the catapult driving force straight up my spine, staring at a high-dimensional slice so nauseating I nearly threw my own soul up on the instrument panel. Before that, this ship was adrift, fighting something that might not even follow the same physical laws as the rest of the universe. And now, the first thing the Federation's public bands pushed back into my ears was bean futures and an evening oldies show. What do you call that? You call it civilization.

Civilization isn't heroic speeches. It isn't war memorial inscriptions. It isn't someone standing on the bridge at a photogenic forty-five-degree lean into the wind. Civilization is nearly dying, and then coming home to hear people on the radio seriously debating traffic, crop prices, and tonight's programming schedule. I leaned back in my seat and let out a long breath.

"... We really made it back." I said it quietly — more to myself than anyone. But Maki heard it anyway. She stood by the XO's station, eyes on the course-correction display, and answered flatly:"Not yet."

"Can't you let a person be sentimental for three seconds?"

"No," Maki said.

"Save it until we're actually inside the Capital Ring system. Otherwise the next voice out of comms is going to inform us we owe three incident statements, four combat after-action reports, and one special memo on Why We Casually Fished Up an Imperial Princess — before tonight is over." Me: "..." Dammit. That was entirely possible.

And that special memo would probably run two volumes, with twelve classified appendices, ending with a line demanding a personal signature confirming: should any of the above prove false, I accept full liability under Federal military law. Jess, slouched over her console, chimed in lazily:"Personally, I think the priority report should be Why the Yukikaze Always Comes Back More Expensive Than She Left."

"You can write that one," Maki said.

"I knew you were going to say that." Lan raised a hand slightly.

"Receiving advance ID return from the Defense Ring." The whole bridge went quiet for half a beat. Not tension. More like everyone sat up straighter without meaning to. Lan kept reading:"Federal Border Defense Network authentication passed. Yukikaze ID confirmed valid. Course-correction advisories sent. Three priority comms queued — one from Border Command, one from the Academy's notification chain, and one from..." She paused. A bad feeling crawled up my neck.

"... one from the Secretariat of the Supreme Council's Defense Committee." I turned silently toward Aida. Aida's expression didn't change. Really. Almost not at all. But I'd swear the angle of her datapad pulled in a fraction, like even she understood: right, the real Federal version of this mess is coming online. Jess let out a slow whistle.

"Wow." I muttered:"Are we getting spotted by the Capital Ring system before we've even entered it?" Nobody answered. Because the question didn't need one. The answer was as obvious as a main-gun beam fired across a dark sky. Ash sat in the captain's chair and didn't immediately take any of the three calls. He just watched the main screen — at the signal traffic growing dense again, noisy again, thoroughly Federal again — and tapped a finger lightly against the armrest. Once. Twice.

Like he was weighing something that hadn't quite landed yet. Watching his back, I suddenly understood. The Yukikaze had made it back to the Federation. Yes. But coming home never meant things were over. Sometimes it just meant — The people looking for you could finally find their way to your door.