Chương 340: 145.Propaganda Funeral 2

I've really been getting dragged into too many things lately. Forget the rest — just take the Imperial Princess business. By rights, it had nothing to do with me. That level of trouble should have been Maki's to carry and Ash's to close, maybe with Aida thrown in — the kind of person who folds paperwork and people equally neatly — and it would've been handled without me. Instead, for reasons unknown, I kept getting hauled into the meetings. First time, I could write it off as situational necessity.

Second time, I started suspecting someone was doing it on purpose. By the third, I was nearly convinced my actual function in the Federal military wasn't piloting a Zero at all, but serving as some kind of mascot — the throw a Hoshino Shimo into the room when the mood turns wrong and see what happens type. By now, everyone who needed to know me, knew me. Including that terrifying maid. I never asked any of their names. Not out of bad manners, and not because I'd suddenly gone face-blind.

In my experience, once you know someone's name, things start getting complicated. Names breed familiarity. Familiarity means that the next time you actually have to stand on opposite sides, your hand slows down by half a beat. And I'm exactly the kind of person who can't afford that half-beat. So for now, I decided to just call her — Miss Maid.

Though honestly, that woman looked far more like a high-end disposal unit who could fold an assassin into thirds barehanded at three in the morning and stuff him neatly into a closet — which is about as far as you can get from my established mental image of the word "maid." After two point-to-point FTL transits, the Yukikaze finally reached the Federation's inner-ring corridor, considerably closer to the capital zone. The star charts outside filled back in.

The public bands returned to that characteristically Federal kind of noise. Military IDs, civilian comms, local broadcasts, traffic warnings, agricultural futures, insomniac night hosts — civilization's greatest proof has never been a monument. It's the fact that at two in the morning, someone's still on the radio, earnestly debating whether tomorrow's cross-sector futures are going to drop.

Unfortunately, before I could properly enjoy that we're finally home feeling, the comm unit on my quarters' wall started chiming, low. Two in the morning. I muttered a sharp fuck and yanked the unit off the wall. I didn't even get the chance to open with if this isn't important I'm stuffing your head in a toilet before the other end spoke first.

"It's Ash. Hoshino, you and Kushima — bridge. Now." One eye still shut, half my brain still soaked in sleep, but my mouth woke up fast.

"If you're throwing some kind of pajama party, I'm putting you out the airlock myself, Ash." Ash didn't bother engaging with that.

"Cut the talk. Move." The line cut. Classic Ash. Even dragging someone out of bed at two in the morning, he made it sound like he was notifying you your expired ration order was ready for pickup. I rubbed my eyes and sat up — and the second I moved, felt something clamp down hard on my right side.... Right. I reached over and patted the heat source currently clinging to me like I was a piece of strategic materiel about to go missing.

"Maki. Up." I sounded half-dead.

"That bastard Ash is digging people up in the middle of the night again. Fucking punchable." Maki only made a muffled sound, face still tucked near my shoulder, arms showing zero intention of letting go. I turned my head and looked across the room. Her own bunk — the one that always looked like it belonged on the cover of a military-discipline manual — was, of course, untouched. Sheets flat, pillow squared, clean as if no one had ever slept there. I couldn't help asking.

"You have your own bed. Why do you always squeeze into mine?"

"Don't wanna..." Maki finally stirred a little — not to let go, but to hold on with even more conviction. Her voice still carried the texture of sleep, the ends of her words a little sticky, nothing like the daytime Executive Officer who could nail an entire crew back into their seats with a single sentence.

"I just want to sleep with you." That's not fair. Seriously. What kind of tactic is acting spoiled at a time like this? Do they teach this at the Academy? Or is this some advanced course in psychological dismantling that Maki Kushima developed privately, off the books? I really wanted to just lie back down and play dead. Unfortunately, Ash's bridge, now was still ringing in my ear, functioning as the least romantic and most effective military alarm clock in existence. So I gritted my teeth and hauled Maki off me.

"Up. Executive Officer, your current mission is to resume human shape."

"Shimo..."

"Using my name won't help. If you're not up in ten seconds, I'm rolling you in the blanket and carrying you to the bridge like that."

"That's fine too."

"It is not." Fifteen minutes later, Maki Kushima had finally reverted to the version that walked upright, straightened her uniform, and made people suspect her veins carried regulations instead of blood. I'd managed to piece myself back together into something roughly presentable. By the time we reached the bridge, my first thought was — Yeah. Definitely not simple. Because almost everyone from Class 144 was already there. Some people were still yawning.

Some had this had better be worth dragging me out of bed written across their faces. Someone had misbuttoned their jacket by one hole, clearly having thrown it on while running. But one way or another, everyone was there. It made for a strange picture. Like an emergency muster. Or roll call before a memorial service. Either way, it didn't look like good news.

"Hoshino. Kushima." Ash waved us over from beside the captain's chair.

"You'd better hear this." Maki and I traded a look and walked over. Lan had already routed a public frequency out to the bridge speakers. A second later, a broadcast voice came through the comms station.

"— on to our next story. Today marks exactly one year since the Yukikaze incident. At the government's invitation, families of the lost crew have gathered today on the capital world of Dunan, to attend the Federal Military's joint memorial service for missing vessels —" My feet stopped moving. The whole bridge felt like it had just taken a light tap from an invisible hammer. The broadcast kept going.

"— in a joint statement, the Federal military and the Supreme Council confirmed that this year's ceremony will both honor the officers and crew of the Yukikaze, and reaffirm the ongoing commitment to investigating the disappearance —""— among the missing are personnel associated with the Federal Military Academy's Class 144 —" Whatever came after that, I didn't fully catch.

Because the eleven of us had already started looking at each other, wearing the same expression — the kind you get after all swallowing a mouthful of spoiled rations together. Not shock. Not being moved. Closer to — Fuck. Did we already get socially cremated? Jess was the first to speak, her voice unusually quiet.

"... I take back what I said the other day."

"Which part?" I asked automatically.

"The part about the Imperial destroyers being the worse problem." Jess stared at the speaker grille, her expression uncharacteristically stiff.

"Turns out the Federation's better at the follow-up stab." Nobody laughed. Because it really wasn't funny. Maki stood next to me without a word, but I could feel the line of her shoulders locked tight. Not fear — something more complicated. Like someone had already held your memorial, written your headline, framed the space for your photo in the obituary column, and probably cleared out your bunk and archived your file, all before you ever made it home.

That kind of bad luck makes you want to swear out loud on the spot. Eventually, I did.

"... Shit." Ash didn't reprimand me. Because even Ash probably didn't feel like enforcing bridge language decorum right now. Lan turned the broadcast down a notch and looked back at us.

"I didn't go looking for this," Lan said.

"It came in on its own, straight off the Capital Ring system's public band. Which means this is already running as open, active news across the Federation."

"I could tell it was public news, thanks," I said, pressing my fingers to my temple.

"The problem is that the people they're memorializing currently number eleven, standing right here, plus one ship parked outside." Roy stood off to the side, arms crossed, skipping his usual commentary for once.

"The timing lines up," Roy said.

"From when we went missing to now — a year's passed out here."

"I know a year's passed out here," I said.

"I'm just not used to being dragged out of bed in the middle of the night just so the first thing I hear is my own one-year memorial special." Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings. This time, someone actually laughed. Aida. Very lightly — brief enough to almost be a trick of the ear, but real.

"At least you're attending in person," Aida said.

"Senpai, that is a terrible way to comfort someone."

"I wasn't comforting you," Aida replied, calm as ever.

"I was stating a fact."... Fair. Whether she's comforting you or twisting the knife, this woman uses exactly the same tone for both. No wonder you can never tell if she's caught you or just laid you out on the table for a look inside. Ash finally spoke.

"Set the feelings aside." The line landed, and the air on the bridge pulled tight at once.

"The problem isn't that a memorial service is bad luck. The problem is that the Federation has officially pulled the Yukikaze incident back into public view. Which means the moment we surface, this stops being internal reports and paperwork. We're walking straight into the media, the families, the Academy, the Council, and —" He paused.

"— the Imperial Third Princess currently being very politely watched on the mid-deck." Right. That one line completed the picture. We weren't just the Yukikaze, back from the dead. We were the Yukikaze, back from the dead, with an Imperial Princess aboard. This wasn't ordinary trouble anymore. This was trouble in formal wear, holding an engraved invitation, with its own live-broadcast crew already set up. Jess whistled low.

"Lovely," she said.

"Normal people come home and call ahead to say they're alive. We come home, crash straight into our own one-year memorial coverage, and drag an Imperial Princess into the Capital Ring system while we're at it."

"If you've got spare breath for commentary," Maki said, voice gone cold, "you've got spare time to write two extra summaries later." Jess shut up instantly. I looked at the familiar-yet-distant scatter of Federal traffic lights on the main screen and felt something absurd settle over me. So this was what coming home could feel like. Not the survived it, made it back to port version.

More like: carrying a pile of things you can't name, can't touch, can't hand off casually — pushing through a world that had already spent a whole year deciding how your story ended — and discovering your first job is proving to a crowd currently lighting candles for you: Sorry. Not dead yet. And likely, about to cost a lot more people their sleep. I exhaled.

"... So now what?" Ash looked ahead, tapped the armrest once.

"So now, before we cross into the Capital Ring system, there's one thing we need to decide." The whole bridge went quiet. He didn't hand over the answer right away. He just watched the main screen — the traffic stream outside, unmistakably Federal now, dense and loud again — and in that particularly Ash, particularly infuriating tone, the kind perfectly calibrated to smash whatever sleepiness you had left, he dropped the second half:"Do we go in as living people first, or as an incident first."

I stared at the ticker crawling under the news on the main screen — exactly one year since the Yukikaze incident — and felt hollow for a second. Then some wire in my head must have crossed, because a deeply unhealthy, yet inexplicably constructive idea started rising slowly out of the back of my skull. I pressed my lips together first. Then the corners of my mouth curled up anyway.

"... Heh." Jess turned to look at me first. That woman has always had a gift for smelling something stupid is about to happen in the air before anyone else. She watched me for two seconds, and her eyes curved into a grin.

"Whoa, Shimo." One hand braced on the console, the other pressed over her mouth, like she was working very hard not to smile in a way that made her look like an accomplice.

"That expression is pure evil." I didn't answer right away. Because some ideas need a couple of laps around your skull first, just to confirm they're not merely underage nonsense, but high-quality underage nonsense. I watched the ticker roll past again. Memorial service. The capital world of Dunan. Families. The government. The military. The media. An entire Federation, very seriously, very solemnly, very officially, holding a funeral for us.... Perfect.

With a stage built that nicely, it'd be a waste not to go up and say hello. I licked my dry lips and looked up at the whole bridge.

"Everyone," I said.

"Want to hear a fun idea?" Nobody jumped to answer. Because everyone on this bridge knew me. That was the problem. The downside of being known is this: the second I smile like someone who's just finished an exam and started plotting how to blow up the instructors' dorm, everyone's threat assessment rises on instinct. Maki, right beside me, already had this had better not be illegal written across her face.

Aida leaned against the other side, datapad still in hand, expression flat — but I'd bet a week's dessert ration that her brain had already shifted into don't stop her yet, let's see which direction Hoshino Shimo bends common sense this time observation mode. As for Ash — He sat in the captain's chair, hand resting on the armrest, not rushing me, not cutting in. Just watching me with that deeply annoying, deeply calm look — exactly like someone deciding whether to defuse an unexploded device or just let it go off.

Jess had probably already guessed. She was grinning with her whole face, looking like a fox that fully intended to go dig through the trash with you and was proud of it.

"Come on," Jess pressed.

"You're already smiling like that. Spit it out. I won't sleep tonight if you don't."

"You never looked like someone who sleeps anyway."

"Thank you."

"Not a compliment."

"Even better. Means I'm on the right track."... This woman is exhausting. But fine. Now wasn't the time to compete with Jess over who's more hopeless. I raised a hand and pointed at the ticker still crawling across the main screen.

"They're holding a memorial for the Yukikaze, right?" Roy, arms crossed, raised an eyebrow.

"Looks that way."

"And it's public. Official. Held right on the capital world." Lan nodded slightly.

"Judging by signal density and the public schedule — a major state event."

"Perfect." I grinned.

"Then we go." The bridge went quiet. One second. Two. On the third, Jess broke. Not a polite little laugh — the full-body kind, the kind that fails to hold and folds you in half. One hand on the console, the other grabbing my shoulder, laughing like she'd just flipped to the answer key at the back of the book and found it printed upside down.

"I knew it!" she gasped, smacking my shoulder.

"I knew that's exactly what was in your head! I knew it!" I let a couple of _heh_s slip out myself. For a moment, the two of us probably looked spectacularly unfit to be wearing Federal uniforms. Maki pressed a hand to her temple.

"You two." Just those three syllables, and I already knew the Executive Officer wanted to bag the both of us and shove us out the airlock with a tag reading If found, do not feed. But the idea was hot. There was no putting it out now.

"No, I'm serious." I pulled the grin back a notch, trying to look like someone who still respected military law.

"Think about it. The Federation is holding a memorial for us. What does that mean? It means the brass, the families, the media, the Academy, and a whole crowd of important people who love the sound of their own voices — all in one place, at one time." Aida's eyes shifted. I knew that look. Senpai was already running the numbers. I pressed the advantage.

"So why would we crawl back through normal channels — report in, get held, get verified, get sorted, get sealed, sit through committee after committee, and hand ourselves over like late homework?" I pointed at the screen.

"They already built the stage. We just show up." Jess added, grinning viciously:"Right. Attend our own memorial. In person." This time even I couldn't hold it back. The corners of my mouth went right back up. Savage. But exactly right. Small reactions started rippling across the bridge. A sharp intake of breath here. A short, disbelieving laugh there — the this is completely unhinged kind. A few faces settling into that complicated expression that says reason says no, but I would pay to watch this happen.

Maki spoke first. And exactly as predicted, her opening line was a bucket of cold water.

"No."

"Just hear me out."

"Hoshino, this isn't a school festival."

"I know it's not a school festival." I crossed my arms.

"School festivals don't offer payback opportunities this good."

"And there's exactly why I said no," Maki said, ice-cold. Jess started laughing again. I ignored Maki's disciplinary strike and kept going.

"The point isn't to cause a scene. The point is efficiency." At that, Ash finally tapped the armrest — once, lightly. Not loud. But the whole bridge knew what it meant: the person in the chair was actually listening now. I straightened my tone to match.

"Right now, the Federation's treating us as an incident. Correct?" Aida nodded.

"Correct."

"So if we go back through normal procedure, what happens? The Yukikaze gets impounded. Verified. Sorted. Classified. Gagged. A dozen committees convene before anyone decides anything. The families don't hear first. The media doesn't hear first. Outside, every wild rumor imaginable starts circulating instead." Roy picked up the thread, like he was already running down my logic.

"And the military has to spend time rebuilding the whole narrative from scratch."

"Exactly." I pointed straight at him.

"That's the thing. But if we show up on the day of the memorial — right over the memorial, right above every head in attendance —" Jess delivered the kill shot:"And very politely inform everyone that, excuse us, the deceased have arrived." This time even Lan turned her face slightly aside. I suspected she was holding back a laugh. Maki looked about two seconds from a migraine, but she still didn't interrupt. Because she could hear it too — this idea looked like a crime, but it wasn't a crime without a skeleton.

I took a breath and laid out the rest.

"The families find out we're alive, immediately. The media can spin all they want, but they can't out-spin an actual warship parked over the capital. The military can't keep treating the Yukikaze as a backlog file. The Federation has to acknowledge, on the spot, that we're back — and redefine the whole incident right there and then." Aida spoke.

"Politically, that would reclaim the narrative in a single move." Her tone stayed flat, but coming from Aida, that carried real weight. Maki turned to her.

"You can't seriously think this is viable." Aida didn't answer right away. She looked down, fingers flying across her datapad, pulling up windows one after another — Capital Ring system transit lanes, ceremonial airspace, military priority ID chains, Dunan's near-orbit control tiers. Data streamed past her eyes so fast it looked less like she was reading it and more like she was ordering it to fall in line. A few seconds later, she looked up.

"File official notice even one minute early, and we get intercepted," Aida said. Jess nodded.

"Very Federal of them."

"File nothing at all, and the risk is too high — the Ring's defense net could open fire or force an intercept." Roy frowned.

"Especially with the Yukikaze still flagged under a missing-vessel ID." Aida tapped the pad again.

"But if we cut into the military's ceremonial airspace window on the day itself, and stack that with restored ID, senior brass concentrated on-site, media already in position, and the ship clearly visible..." She paused.

"... the odds improve significantly." Maki went quiet. I knew what that meant. The Executive Officer still wanted to say this is insane — but her rational half had already started admitting: it wasn't pure insanity after all. Ash spoke.

"Continue." Two words. The whole mood on the bridge shifted. Because that meant the plan wasn't a joke anymore. It was on the table. I licked my lips, feeling an entirely inappropriate rush of satisfaction — the kind you get when you toss out an idea in class that should earn you a write-up, and instead of throwing you out, the instructor waves you up to the board to keep drawing the tactical diagram.

"One more key point." I rapped my knuckles against the console.

"The Princess can't make a high-profile entrance with us." Lan nodded first this time.

"Agreed. If Hedwig's exposed, the incident tier doubles instantly."

"Not doubles. Detonates," Maki said.

"So she goes quiet," I said.

"The Yukikaze makes the loud entrance, pulls every eye in range. Hedwig and her people slip out through a separate security chain while everyone's looking the other way. Something boring. Something nobody would look at twice." Jess chimed in:"Like a medevac shuttle. Or a routine Capital Ring system transfer."

"Exactly." I snapped my fingers.

"The more boring, the better. Every camera on the Yukikaze, on the memorial, on families crying, on the brass losing their composure, on us — the year-dead walking around alive. The Princess disappears in the noise." Lan said quietly: "A diversion."

"I prefer to call it mutual benefit," I said.

"I prefer to call it a stroke for Legal," Jess said.

"That ship sailed a while ago." Aida looked down, adjusting a few more markers.

"If we do this, Hedwig's transfer has to be cut entirely out of the Yukikaze's public-facing process. Even the number of people aboard who know needs to shrink."

"Then shrink it," Ash said. The room went quiet for a beat. I looked up at the captain's chair. Ash still looked entirely like Ash — no grin, none of the let's go break the rulebook energy Jess and I were radiating. He just watched the forward course projection, like a road that had always been there, one nobody else had the nerve to take. Maki frowned.

"Ash. You're not actually going to approve this." Ash didn't answer her directly. He asked Roy first.

"From the Capital Ring system's outer edge to the airspace over Dunan — can you cut an approach clean enough to work, without getting us shredded by the defense grid on the way in?" Roy froze for a second, then the corner of his mouth twitched. I knew that look. Not unease. The look a technician gets when a request sounds completely unreasonable, and some part of them starts thinking,... that's actually kind of a fun problem.

"I can compute it," Roy said.

"But it has to be precise. And it has to line up with whatever gap opens in the day's official flight corridors." Ash turned to Lan.

"The memorial's public broadcast chain, the military ID net, the media relay points — can you make sure that ten seconds before we cross in, everyone sees our ID first, not just an unidentified heavy contact?" Lan pressed a hand to her earpiece, eyes already sharpening.

"I can try."

"Not try," Ash said.

"... I can do it," Lan corrected immediately. Jess grinned.

"Nice. Lan's in the water too now."

"Shut up," Lan said. Ash looked at Aida.

"Hedwig's quiet transfer — you run the cutout. Notify the Committee, but don't give them the full timeline. Minimum necessary only." Aida nodded.

"Understood." Maki started to say something, but Ash had already turned to her.

"Kushima." Maki straightened.

"Sir."

"You own shipwide order. From now on, the Yukikaze's return runs on two tracks — the surface itinerary and the real one. Re-partition the need-to-know list. Double the corridor security around Hedwig and her people, but make it look more ordinary than it already does." Maki paused.

"... Ordinary?"

"Ordinary," Ash said.

"Ordinary enough that it reads as us babysitting an exhausting diplomatic guest who isn't quite newsworthy." She got it.

"Understood." Finally, Ash looked at me. A bad feeling crawled up my neck.

"Hoshino."

"... What."

"It's your proposal," Ash said, calm as ever.

"So when the time comes, you lead the first shuttle down." Me: "... What?" Jess folded in half laughing.

"Excellent. The mascot finally gets an official deployment."

"What mascot!" I nearly jumped out of my seat.

"I proposed the idea! Proposing it and being the first one off the ramp are not the same job!"

"On the Yukikaze," Ash said, "they are."

"How is that—!"

"They just are." Dammit. This is exactly why I hate being constructively unhinged. The first person hauled in to execute is always the one who opened her mouth. That said. If we really could fly the Yukikaze over the capital on the day of the memorial, and drop a shuttle right into the middle of it, in front of the entire Federation— Just picturing it made my heart pick up in a deeply unhealthy way. It wasn't a prank. Well. Strictly speaking, of course it was a prank. Just one operating at a slightly elevated tier.

High enough that the whole Capital Ring system would remember it for a long time. Ash tapped the armrest once more, like stamping a final seal on the whole thing.

"Good," he said.

"Since the Federation's already held a funeral for the Yukikaze —" He lifted his eyes, sweeping over the Capital Ring system traffic lanes on the main screen, over the public band still running our one-year memorial coverage, and finally over the rest of us — a group that had looked like we'd swallowed something foul five minutes ago, and was now collectively starting to look thoroughly unhinged. Then, in that tone of his — reasonable, and reasonably punchable — Ash dropped the second half.

"— then the Yukikaze can go finish it herself." The bridge went quiet for a beat. The next second, someone started laughing. Maybe Jess. Maybe me. Maybe all of us at once. Either way, I knew one thing for certain. This homecoming was going to be loud.