Chương 346: 149.We Are Still Alive 1

After the seven seconds were over, the whole world went very quiet. Not actually silent. The Yukikaze's bridge still hummed with instruments; Lan's fingers were still running across her panel like she was fleeing a debt collector; Evelyn still wore that expression that said make one mistake and I'll reformat you and your ancestors back eighteen generations; and from Harvey's section came the sound of a backup module making a noise very much like an old refrigerator trying to die with dignity.

But I still felt quiet. It was the kind of quiet where the entire Federation's Capital Ring system had breathed in, and hadn't exhaled yet. On the main screen, Dunan's near-orbit defense net was already behind us. The twelve Skyshield fortresses hung in the starfield like twelve teeth that hadn't managed to bite down in time.

The Yukikaze pressed forward into the Capital Ring system's inner layer, attitude so steady it was almost offensive — like we weren't about to crash a memorial service, but had been invited to a very exclusive, very unwelcoming social dinner. The kind you walk into with a dead person's ID.

"Outer public channels, open," Lan said.

"Venue primary broadcast, regional networks, military media backup — all connected." Evelyn didn't look up.

"At this point, basically everyone in the Federation with standing to watch this spectacle is watching."

"What a comforting way to put it," I couldn't help saying.

"You're welcome," Evelyn replied, very quickly.

"And if you trip on the landing, I can make sure it goes out in the highest resolution available." I stared at the back of her head. This woman would be a perfect negative case study in Federal talent education. Her professional ability was terrifying. What came out of her mouth was terrifying. The direction of the terrifying was just slightly different from everyone else's. Maki stood beside me and said nothing — just pressed the restraint band flat against my chest again.

The motion was clean and efficient, like checking a weapon. Or worse: like checking that the trouble-maker about to be broadcast live across the entire Federation had at least tied herself down properly.

"Stand up straight," Maki said.

"I am straight."

"I'm not talking about your personality."

"That line is dangerous, Captain Kushima." Maki finally turned her head and looked at me. That look held a little tiredness, a little exasperation, and a little I don't have time for this right now, but if you keep going I'm not above dealing with you — all in one glance. Honestly, that single look was more oppressive than all twelve Skyshield fortresses in Dunan's near orbit. Ash sat in the acting captain's chair, still wearing no expression worth mentioning.

The Yukikaze had gone missing, run for her life, fought her way through, picked up an Imperial Princess, and blasted back to the Federation's Capital Ring system — if someone with a richer emotional range had been sitting in that seat, they'd either have a perforated stomach by now or have suffered a cerebrovascular event in loyal service to the nation. But Ash wasn't like that. He was like a piece of iron that temporarily held all the chaos down.

"All hands, maintain approach attitude." When he spoke, his voice wasn't loud — but it made everyone on the bridge straighten their backs without thinking.

"No acceleration, no evasion, no unnecessary corrections. Today we are not infiltrating. We are not breaking through." He paused.

"We are coming home." Maybe I was overthinking it, but for half a second, the bridge felt like someone had forgotten to breathe. Roy let out a low whistle. Jess, sitting at the aft separation control station, was grinning like an honor student who'd just stolen the answer key and hadn't been caught yet. She watched the separation sequence while cutting into comms.

"Told you. That line had it. Ash, you barely talk normally, turns out you've been saving up your finishing moves."

"Shut up and watch your station," Aida said, mildly. Jess didn't shut up at all.

"Aida, you have no sense of occasion. I've been waiting all night — no, I've been waiting a whole year — for exactly this moment."

"You'd better have actually spent that year waiting, not causing trouble," Aida said.

"Those aren't mutually exclusive." I almost laughed. This was the most terrifying thing about the Yukikaze. Not that she'd held on at the border for a year. Not that she'd clawed her way back from being lost. Not that she currently had the Galactic Empire's Third Princess in her custody somewhere below.

The most terrifying thing was that with a few minutes left before we gave the entire Capital Ring system a collective cardiac event, this crew was still sniping at each other like it was five minutes before evening study hall. In a certain sense, that was probably also proof that our collective mental state had already gone somewhere past repair. The main screen cut to the venue feed. This wasn't an ordinary memorial service.

This was a ceremony where someone had taken the words national mourning and stacked actual budget and official documentation behind every single one of them. The Central Memorial Plaza below Dunan's Capital Ring system looked like a slab of obsidian polished far too clean. At its center stood a holographic projection of the Yukikaze — not the real one, scarred and jury-rigged and barely driven home, but the factory-fresh version, the kind that looked like the cover of an enrollment brochure.

Along the hull's flanks, the names of the missing were projected in solemn fonts and muted colors, flanked by a row of flowers white enough to look like they were collectively seeing everyone off. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it. Seeing my own name hanging up there felt genuinely strange. Not frightening.

More like walking into a convenience store to buy a drink, looking up, and finding a black-and-white photo of yourself above the register, captioned: In memory of a child who tried hard. My first instinct was to ask: excuse me, this photo is terrible, can we use a different one? The emcee stood on stage in black, voice smooth and measured, emotional control calibrated to exactly the right degree — clearly someone very skilled at grieving on behalf of the nation in the most expensive way possible.

"... Today, we gather to remember the Yukikaze, lost one year ago during a border operation, and all personnel who did not return..." The camera swept the front rows of family seating. A mother gripping her handkerchief very tightly. A father sitting with perfect posture, as if the moment his form broke, something else would break with it. Younger siblings in ill-fitting black clothes, working very hard to look like they understood what they were there for.

Behind them: a row of senior military brass, medals polished bright enough to look like they'd come to compete over whose chest was heaviest. Along the outer edge: the media section, cameras dense as a field of metal flowers, every lens open and hungry, waiting for an image worth transmitting across the Capital Ring system. Unfortunately, we were there to provide exactly that image.

"Venue radar is picking up this ship," Lan said.

"Let it," Ash said.

"Military internal channels are stirring," Aida added.

"Someone's already asking which fleet failed to file the proper forms before entering memorial airspace."

"And the answer?" Roy asked. Aida watched her data window, and the corner of her mouth moved, very slightly.

"The most common assessment right now is that it's a system error." I couldn't help letting out a low "wow."

"People really do love the answer that requires the least accountability," Jess said, with feeling.

"That's the public sector's self-preservation mechanism," Aida said.

"That's the official-language version of 'play dead and see what happens,'" I translated. Aida looked at me and, remarkably, didn't deny it. The Yukikaze kept moving forward. On the venue's live feed, a few cameras started showing unnatural tremors. Then one long-lens camera, which had been pointed at the emcee, began slowly tilting upward. Then another. A third was the most dramatic — it looked like the cameraperson had frozen first, then the lens jerked skyward, nearly turning Skyshield into abstract art.

The emcee's voice stopped for one beat. That beat was genuinely beautiful. Like an entire national ceremony, rehearsed for god knows how long, had just had an extremely inconsiderate iron rod shoved through its middle. Then the edge of the cloud layer above the venue split open. The Yukikaze appeared in full. Not a projection. Not a documentary. Not the kind of imagined rendering in a war history textbook with a mournful voiceover attached.

A real, living warship — carrying scrapes and heat marks and the evidence of hasty repairs and the wear of a long, hard fight back from the border — pressing down into the sky over a memorial held in her name. I saw that scale of collective chaos from above for the first time. The emcee stopped. Below, someone stood up first, and then, like a contagion, row after row of people rose.

In the family section, someone covered their mouth; someone else walked two steps forward, as if afraid the scene would vanish if they waited any longer. The row of senior military brass broke too — some bent over their terminals, some looked up at the sky, some wore expressions that had solidified like they'd just swallowed an entire procedures manual. The media section went fully feral: pivoting, zooming, switching feeds, tracking, fast as a school of mechanical sharks that had just smelled blood.

And we were the piece of meat that had jumped into the middle of the pool.

"ID code, public," Lan said. A second later, nearly every connected military and civilian display system at the venue lit up with the same annotation, simultaneously: Yukikaze, No. 8 Kagerou-class Destroyer, Federal Fleet. I genuinely wished I could see the ECGs of the officials on the ground.

"First wave of comms is saturated," Evelyn said, with an infuriating steadiness.

"One third are trying to confirm whether it's real. One third are shouting. The remaining third are busy assigning blame to each other. Good news: everyone's occupied. Nobody has time to stop you from looking impressive."

"Thank you for describing my life's highlight as a public safety incident," I said.

"You're welcome." Jess laughed out loud from the back.

"Shimo, are you ready? I'm about to release you. Go scare some people."

"The way you said that makes me sound like a rare but unstable apex predator."

"Aren't you?" I genuinely couldn't argue with that. The first-wave shuttle separation sequence began beneath the hull. A faint vibration moved up through the deck, like a large creature gathering its muscles before extending its claws one by one. The separation monitoring window on the bridge's side panel lit up cell by cell. The first-wave shuttles detached from the mother ship, cutting into the Capital Ring system's low atmosphere along their predetermined descent axes. And I was on one of them.

Maki walked with me to the shuttle hatch. Walked with is generous — it was closer to an escort. Because she watched me the whole way with the look that said you'd better not try to change your lines in the last three minutes. The lighting inside the shuttle was brighter than the bridge, unreasonably so, as if it was afraid you might still try to pretend you weren't nervous just because the mood was dim.

I stood at the hatch, metal bulkhead behind me, sealed door in front, and beyond that door: the single worst venue in the entire Federation for an underage first-year to say the wrong thing. Suddenly, I very much wanted to strangle the version of myself from the night before who had proposed this. Maki stopped in front of me and reached up to straighten the last slightly-off angle of my collar. That motion was light. Light enough to look like she was worried someone might see it.

Light enough to look like she didn't care at all who saw.

"It's too late to turn back now," she said.

"I know."

"Scared?"

"Obviously."

"Good." I looked up at her.

"Good how?"

"Means you're still normal." Maki looked at me, voice dropped low.

"If you looked completely relaxed right now, I'd start wondering whether you'd already crossed into irreversible."

"What about you?"

"I'm more stable than you are by nature."

"That answer is very you." The corner of Maki's mouth moved — almost a smile, then pulled back. She really was someone who wasted her face. When she did smile, it made people want to push their luck, and she rationed it like a limited-edition release. Jess's voice came through comms, vibrating with barely-contained energy.

"Shimo, you copy? I'll say it again — I waited all day for this. I have been waiting a whole year for this exact moment. Don't you dare step off that ramp and open with 'excuse me, coming through.' I will never let you live that down."

"Shut up."

"Oh good, morale's high." Roy cut in, more formal than usual, but still unable to fully hide that he was enjoying this.

"Landing crosswind nominal, attitude stable. When you walk out, keep your head up. Looking at the ground in front of a crowd is a habit shared by recruits and convicts."

"Thank you for that deeply inspiring classification system."

"Any time." Then Aida.

"Hoshino." Just my name. I straightened up without thinking.

"You're not representing yourself alone," Aida said.

"You're the first one off. The moment you speak, you'll set the frame for how everyone down there understands the Yukikaze today. You'll determine half of it before anyone else gets a word in."

"Could you have told me this ten minutes ago?"

"No. I needed you to know it right now."... Right. The Rosen family's approach to education really is perfectly calibrated for building lasting psychological damage. Last came Ash's voice.

"Shuttle One. Thirty seconds." No good luck. No don't be nervous. Just, steadily:"Go down alive. Land standing. The rest is yours." I let out a breath. That was more useful than any polished line could have been. Maki stepped back half a pace but didn't leave. She raised her hand, and her knuckles tapped lightly against my forehead, once.

"Don't overdo it."

"I'm not doing anything."

"You've been performing since the day I met you."

"Captain Kushima, that's slander."

"File the complaint when you're back alive." The deceleration vibration through the shuttle hull intensified. The descent had begun. I could feel the ground getting closer, the noise of the venue feeding through the external mics and the hull in layers. It wasn't just loud — it was the sound of tens of thousands of people who'd just been slapped in the face by reality all at once, and hadn't yet decided whether to scream first, cry first, or swear first.

I thought of what Maki had said last night, by the small observation port. You're not an emcee. You're not a spokesperson. All you have to do is stand there and let them know you're alive. That's enough.... Alright. Then I'll stand. The indicator lights outside the hatch turned green, one by one. Landing complete. Hatch open.