Chương 435: 205.Insane Idea

The bus was shaking by the time it tore out of the Imperial Hotel's underground garage. Not a figure of speech. It was actually shaking. The tires hit a seam in the pavement, the chassis bounced, and when it slammed back down, the lighting strips along the ceiling shuddered with the impact. The other five buses bit hard onto our tail—six of them strung together, a convoy of tin coffins being chased at gunpoint through streets that hadn't fully woken up yet.

I stood in the front half of the lead bus, left hand braced on a seatback, right hand on my terminal, running headcounts and casualty checks across the other five vehicles.

"Class A, full roll call."

"Class B, report."

"Class C, serious injuries first. Don't waste my time with scratches."

"Roy, don't just give me totals. I need the number of combat-capable bodies." The responses came back one after another—some panting, some crying, some still swearing. The background noise was all engine roar and groaning, broken up by fragments of human speech: keep your head down, lay her flat, don't touch that. It was chaos with distinct layers, sounding exactly like a mass-casualty event co-hosted by the UIMA Seitokai. The good news: the entire second year was on board.

Everyone currently packed together on these six buses, crying together, cursing together, was ours. Nobody had been left behind at the hotel. That was the closest thing to a gift the morning had produced so far. The bad news: a few of the injuries didn't look like the kind you could hold together with willpower alone. One abdominal puncture—hadn't gone all the way through the organs, thankfully, but the blood loss was heavy. Two severe burns from glancing beam fire.

One leg snapped in the crush, its owner white-faced in the rear, biting back the pain in silence. If we didn't get them treated fast, this field trip was going to graduate into a memorial service.

"Class A, thirty-seven. All aboard."

"Class B, thirty-nine. Two critical, one moderate burn."

"Class C, headcount complete. Nobody missing, but four are in bad shape mentally."

"Class D—" I listened to each report, nailing the numbers down one at a time in my head. Beside me, Maki had gone half to her knees in the aisle, splinting and tying off a student's sliced-open arm. Her hands were steady. Steady enough to make you wonder whether, on top of running the Seitokai, she'd quietly picked up a second minor: battlefield triage, and some private technique for disciplining men who hit their wives. Hedwig sat in the front row by the window, still not fully back from the shock.

Her Galactic Empire dress uniform was still immaculate, save for a smear of dust and someone else's blood on the cuff. Her face was still beautiful—the kind of beautiful that belonged in commemorative albums or historical portraits—but sitting on a rattling getaway bus, she was pale as someone who'd just been dragged out of a dream by the collar. Made sense. She'd finished a speech about peace, and thirty seconds later, her own side had nearly put a hole through her.

The Empire really did have a talent for accelerating a person's education. I finished the last round of counts, lowered the terminal, and had barely let out half a breath when Maki's voice cut in from the side.

"You'd better figure out how you're going to explain this." She didn't raise her voice. But somehow the whole bus heard it anyway. Jess, Harvey, Akari, D—even the students in the back who'd only just started breathing normally again—every one of them turned and fixed their eyes on me. The look was remarkably unanimous. Rough translation: Hoshino Shimo, you'd better cough up something decent right now. I leaned against the seatback and looked down at the black suitcase by my feet. I couldn't tell the truth.

Not the whole truth, anyway. I couldn't exactly stand up on a getaway bus, smile and wave at the entire second-year class, and say:"Good morning, everyone. I'm a test subject for a highly classified Federal special-ops program. Thanks for your continued support." That wasn't a confession. That was a highly efficient way to finish off the wounded on the spot. So I picked a version that was only somewhat idiotic. I cleared my throat, looked up, and put on an expression as earnest as a Seitokai budget report.

"I do part-time work for Intelligence." The bus went quiet for half a second. Then Jess laughed first.

"That sounds like a euphemism that's more dangerous than gunfire."

"Because it is a euphemism," I said, without missing a beat.

"This time I just happened to be in the right place. I got some vague advance warnings, so I made a few preparations." D leaned against the seats on the other side, still holding the combat axe like he wasn't sure it was intimidating enough on its own.

"Does 'being prepared' seriously include packing a photon SMG and a axe for a school field trip?"

"Looks like you learned something new today," I said.

"What I learned today is that if you ever quit being Vice President and took up toppling governments instead, your success rate would probably be uncomfortably high."

"Thanks for the compliment. I'm busy right now." Harvey rubbed his bruised shoulder and clicked his tongue.

"Part-time work for Intelligence. That's exactly the kind of side gig you don't put on a résumé."

"Think of it as building real-world experience during your student years."

"What kind of real world."

"The kind that shoots back." Akari sat by the aisle, still swinging between exhilaration and delayed terror, eyes bright like she'd just gotten an autograph on a disaster movie set.

"So you really suspected something was going to happen?"

"Suspected. Not knew." I said.

"The difference between those two is usually measured in body count." Maki didn't join the peanut gallery. She finished tying off the dressing, stood, wiped the blood off her hands, and walked over. She looked at me. Her eyes were flat. Flat enough to feel almost cold.

"How much else haven't you told us？" I didn't answer. Not because I didn't want to—because at that exact moment another bus erupted over the line with the class rep just passed out, someone's throwing up back here, don't let her hyperventilate. Maki's account had to go to the back of the queue.

"Yell at me later." I held up a hand, giving her a brief hold-off gesture.

"Let me lock down the living count first." Maki held my gaze for one second. By rights, she should have said something sharp here. Something like you're remarkably good at picking your moments to dodge a question. Instead she drew a breath and turned to face the bus.

"Everyone, quiet." Her voice wasn't loud, but it carried.

"Follow the Vice President's instructions for now. Save the complaints for when you're still alive to make them." I glanced sideways at her. She really was annoyingly reliable when she took control of a room. Right then, the shared channel from another bus cut in with a voice I recognized immediately and would have very much preferred to mute.

"I object." I closed my eyes. There it was. The terminal switched to Bus B's feed. Freya Nikaido stood in the middle of the aisle, one hand on a seatback, the other pointed at the camera, wearing the expression of someone determined to win the argument no matter what was collapsing around her. In a way, the woman was impressive. Most people, fresh out of a firefight, prioritized things like staying alive, breathing, checking their limbs were still attached.

Nikaido's priority was finding Hoshino Shimo and picking a fight. If she put that kind of stamina into her studies, the Federation would have a second valedictorian by now.

"Hoshino Shimo, what exactly are you still hiding," Nikaido demanded.

"You'd better tell us where we're actually going."

"Well said." I nodded, entirely sincere.

"That's exactly what I was about to do." I bent down, turned the suitcase toward me, and popped the latches. Click. Not a loud sound. But in the sudden hush of the bus, it landed like a very bad overture. The lid came open. Inside, laid out in neat rows, were uniform after uniform. Dark grey shading into black. Silver piping. High collars, epaulettes, belts. The kind of thing that didn't require good eyesight to know had absolutely no business appearing on a UIMA field-trip packing list.

"We're now on Phase Two." I looked up and gave the entire second-year class a friendly smile I knew perfectly well was highly punchable.

"Open them. Put them on." The bus went dead silent for one second. Then it detonated—like someone had thrown oil and water into the same hot pan.

"Whoa—those are Imperial uniforms."

"Wait, seriously?"

"She's lost her mind."

"Has the Vice President finally decided to defect?"

"Knew the Seitokai would end up here sooner or later."

"Shut up, what does that even—""Hoshino Shimo, what the hell are you trying to do." Nikaido's voice cut through the shared channel, still not letting go. The objections came in waves. Some people terrified, some confused, some already questioning their entire existence. The most surreal moment came from the back, where a guy picked up an Imperial jacket, turned it over with genuine academic interest, and said:"The tailoring's actually not bad."

"Is that seriously what you should be focused on right now," someone hissed beside him.

"Relax." I raised a hand, smoothing the noise down, keeping the professional smile in place.

"I am absolutely not taking any of you to defect to the Empire." I let that land for half a beat.

"I'm just taking you to temporarily act like Imperial citizens." This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it. Then I cut Nikaido's channel before she could wind up again. The world got a little quieter. Excellent. Technology really was the cornerstone of civilized progress. Lan sat toward the back, calm as if this entire ordeal were just a piece of tedious administrative paperwork. She looked up.

"The civilian spaceport's been sealed," she said, perfectly even.

"Looks like someone really does want all of us dead on the ground."

"Yep." I nodded.

"Which is why I'm obviously not taking us there." I pointed out the window. The bus was cutting onto the outer ring road. Through the morning haze and steel infrastructure, another facility was resolving in the distance—lower-profile than the civilian port, and considerably less friendly.

"That one." The quick ones went pale on the spot.

"Hey. Are you insane." Someone in the back couldn't hold it in.

"That's the Imperial military spaceport."

"Friend," I said, turning toward the voice with a smile of suspicious warmth, "you seem to have forgotten we still have her." I reached over and patted Hedwig's shoulder, gently. She flinched—a small, genuine start, as if my touch had finally pulled her all the way back from wherever the shock had left her. I lowered my voice.

"Your Highness, we're going to need you in a minute. Remember: we're Imperial cadets. We protected you and got you out of the hotel during the attack." Hedwig looked up at me. The unsteadiness hadn't fully cleared from her eyes. But something else had settled in alongside it. Not quite reassurance. More like she'd finally traced the line all the way back—through the banquet, through the speech, to right now—and understood exactly where I'd been laying the track the whole time. She nodded slowly.

"All right." D, sitting nearby, had shock written plainly across his forehead.

"Hoshino." He stared at me.

"You planned this far ahead?"

"No." I shrugged.

"I prepared a lot of exits and prayed I'd never need any of them."

"This isn't an exit anymore. This is writing the world's suicide note in advance."

"Thanks. Your literary instincts are improving." I bent down and started pulling uniforms out one by one, passing them down the aisle.

"All right, everyone. Start changing. Girls—corsets go on first. The Galactic Empire doesn't have female soldiers. Officially, anyway. If your hair's a problem, there are wigs in the second layer. Help yourselves." The bus detonated again.

"Wait, what do you mean corsets."

"It means today, in the interest of staying alive, you get a practical lesson in exactly how badly the Empire's institutional design deserves a complaint filed against it," I said.

"Why is it always worse for girls."

"Because the Empire's worse."

"I don't want to wear a wig."

"Would you rather get off the bus and explain to the pursuit squad why your hairstyle doesn't meet Imperial grooming regulations?"

"…I'm suddenly finding the wig very acceptable." The boys were already fumbling into jackets. The back rows erupted into a collective female protest over corsets, wigs, and sizing. For a moment the whole bus turned into a tactical dressing room. Minus the firefight we'd just escaped, it could've passed for a Seitokai costume party gone badly wrong. I was pulling out a uniform in Maki's size when she said my name.

"Hoshino." I looked up. She stood in front of me. Not as cold as before. Somehow worse than cold. Because the way she was looking at me now was serious.

"I understand you less and less," she said. It wasn't a heavy sentence. But it landed harder than you'd better figure out how to explain this had, and I couldn't have told you why. I was still holding the uniform. Two seconds of silence, then, low:"I'm sorry I didn't tell you first." I held it out to her.

"I genuinely didn't have a choice. Every extra person who knows is another point of exposure." She didn't take it right away. She looked at me, weighing how much of that was true and how much was standard Hoshino Shimo withholding. Then she took it.

"Fine." she said.

"I'm putting this on your tab."

"Seitokai accounting is terrifying."

"You still have room to joke."

"If I stop joking, I start sounding like the villain." Maki didn't smile. She turned, uniform in her arms, and walked toward the back. Halfway there, she paused—didn't turn around—and dropped one line over her shoulder.

"Vice President."

"Yeah?"

"When this is over, you fill in the rest yourself." I watched her back until she was out of sight, then let out a slow breath.

"Understood, President." Then I bent down and kept handing out enough Imperial uniforms to give a Federal disciplinary officer a heart attack, one set at a time. Outside the window, the outline of the Imperial military spaceport grew closer. Inside, six overloaded getaway buses full of survivors were being repackaged into something that belonged in a completely different story. The thought made me laugh, quietly, to myself. The world really was more creative when it was broken.

Tactical disguise, stripped to its bones, is just cramming a group of people who have no business being in the same frame into a lie that barely holds together, and praying the other side is too busy to look closely. Right now, across six buses, sat three hundred second-year Federation students fresh out of a firefight. Some had blood on their hands. Some had ringing ears. Some had broken heels.

Some were still clutching their bags like they held their childhoods, not a few sets of notes they'd probably never need again. Fine. Youth. Education. Field trips. All dying, with proper Imperial flair. I stood at the front of Class A's bus, one hand on a seatback, the other broadcasting my terminal to the shared channel so all five other buses could hear.

"All class reps, listen up. We're reorganizing." The background noise across all six buses—crying, gasping, someone quietly asking if we were going to die here—dropped a notch. Not because I commanded that much authority. It was because when people are drowning, they reach for whatever looks most like driftwood. Unfortunately, today that was me.

"First. Girls, handle your appearance first," I said.

"If you can wrap it, wrap it. Hands, shoulders, neck, forehead, jaw—cover whatever you can. Blankets, jackets, whatever's ugly, use it. From this moment, you're not girls. You're wounded soldiers." One beat of silence. Then it went off.

"What do you mean, whatever's ugly?"

"Vice President, that's rude."

"What I want is for you to be alive, not photogenic," I said, without blinking.

"Imperial soldiers who see someone wrapped up like a mummy think casualty, not let's check the gender. The human brain is lazy. Use it." A cluster of girls in the back traded looks—reluctant, all of them—but their hands went straight to the medical kits anyway. Good. The most endearing thing about people in a real crisis: the mouth protests while the body cooperates. I kept going.

"Second. All critical injuries move to Bus B. Moderate injuries too. If you can lie down, lie down. If you can't, lean. Don't rush to wipe the blood off. Let the clothes stay messy. More bandages, more pain on your face. I want that bus looking like it just rolled out of the side door of hell." Someone sucked in a breath over the line. Harvey's voice came through from Bus B, carrying the tone of a man who had finally understood exactly how morally flexible I was willing to be.

"You're turning B into the showcase bus."

"Correct," I said.

"Show people one bus full of horrific casualties and they'll fill in the rest automatically. Fine old human tradition—lazy, and loves writing its own story. Since that's how it works, we help them write the right one." Lan came in calmly.

"I'll sort the seating on B."

"Good. Put the best pain actors by the windows."

"What exactly do you think a field trip is," Roy cut in, unable to help himself.

"A large-scale off-campus survival exam," I said.

"Imperial special edition." Jess, wrapping Akari from shoulder to neck until she looked like an exhibit from a combat trauma video, clicked her tongue.

"I genuinely can't tell anymore if you're a tactical genius or just vicious."

"Those aren't mutually exclusive," I said. Akari, letting herself be turned into a walking display piece, raised a hand with far too much enthusiasm.

"Hoshino, should I put some soot on my face too?" I looked at her.

"Do it."

"Yes!"

"Don't make it look like a face-painting booth at a school fair," Maki said flatly, from my left. She was redressing a girl's forehead wound in the front row. Clean hands, clean voice—even her contempt sounded like a calibrated medical procedure. Now that she'd changed back into her Federation uniform, she looked more like the Maki I knew. Which only made the I haven't finished settling this with you expression underneath it more formidable than usual. I ignored the pressure and turned to Hedwig in the front row.

She'd been very quiet. Quiet in the specific way of someone who understood, better than anyone else on this bus, exactly how what came next would read in official political language. I crouched in front of her, level with her eyes.

"Your Highness. Before we take this step, there's something I need to say clearly." Hedwig looked up. Her face was still pale, the shadows under her eyes heavy. People who've just survived an attack always look a little like reality slapped them. In her case, the hand belonged to the Empire. I kept my voice low.

"If this goes well, you can still tell people afterward that you were taken, coerced, forced to cooperate." I paused.

"If it doesn't, then by any straightforward reading, this is treason." That landed like a stone. The students close enough to hear went still. Even the ones complaining about tight bandages had the sense to shut up. Hedwig didn't answer right away. She looked down at her own hands, folded in her lap. Clean, slender hands—built for turning pages, signing documents, holding a teacup. Not for opening the gates of an Imperial military spaceport for three hundred Federation students.

But today, she was the only key that fit the lock. After a few seconds, she looked up, glanced once at Maki, then back at me.

"Things being what they are," she said, "there's no other way." Her voice wasn't loud. But it was steady. Not the voice of someone backed into a corner. More like someone who'd known for a long time she'd eventually have to choose a side on some line—she'd just never expected the line to show up on a bus full of Federation second-years. I nodded.

"All right. I'll take that as a yes."

"You were never going to give me a second option anyway," Hedwig said, dry. I smiled.

"Your Highness. You're getting better at telling the truth." Beside me, Maki let out a very quiet breath. Not relief. More like pushing something down that had been sitting in her chest since the hotel. Good. The living could always settle their bills in installments. Right on cue, the shared channel delivered a voice I recognized immediately and had been hoping to avoid a little longer.

"I still have objections." Freya Nikaido. I pressed two fingers to my temple. Where did this woman get her stamina. From the hotel through the entire evacuation, the only part of her that had come through the attack completely undamaged seemed to be the nerve she used specifically to argue with me. The terminal cut to Bus B. Nikaido stood in the aisle, one hand on a headrest, the other jabbing at the camera, wearing the conviction of someone about to convene a school disciplinary hearing on the spot.

"Hoshino Shimo, this plan is insane," she said.

"Even if we storm the port, what makes you think any of us can pass for Imperial cadets?"

"You," I said. Nikaido froze. Not just her. The whole channel went quiet for a beat. I didn't bother dragging it out.

"You studied Imperial, right?" Her brow creased.

"…So what if I did."

"Excellent." I nodded.

"Then you're useful, starting now. Anyone on the back three buses who can't answer a challenge, or opens their mouth and sprays a Federal accent everywhere—you cover it. Monitor B, C, and D for pronunciation and word choice. Sand down whatever would blow the whole thing." She clearly hadn't expected me to slot her straight into the operation. For a second she looked like someone hit in the face with a clipboard.

"You—""What." My tone was pure warmth.

"You wanted to know what I was doing. Now you know. And you got a promotion." Someone on the bus couldn't hold it and snorted. Nikaido's face darkened further. But she didn't keep arguing. I wasn't surprised. The most annoying thing about Nikaido was never that she liked a fight. It was that she actually had a brain. Once she realized this wasn't me dragging her into a stunt but a real gap she was the best fit for, she stopped acting like an audience.

She drew a breath and said, through her teeth:"I can handle the back buses."

"Thank you." I smiled in the most punchable way I could manage.

"Knew you had some constructive use besides arguing."

"Hoshino Shimo, you are genuinely insufferable."

"I'll take that." Laughter leaked through the channel from several buses at once. Under enough pressure, people's threshold for humor drops fast—one of humanity's more practical features. As long as someone was laughing, the group hadn't broken. I let myself exhale, turned, and found D already reaching for an Imperial uniform with the air of a man who'd earned it. I put a hand up immediately.

"You. Back row. Sit. Head down." D froze.

"Huh."

"Back row," I repeated.

"Head down. Less face." He stared at me, slowly arriving at the realization that the universe had a personal grudge against him.

"Have you ever seen a Black guy in the Imperial military?" I asked. D was silent for two seconds. Then his whole face settled into the specific suffering of a man failed by civilization.

"That's racial discrimination."

"Absolutely." I waved him off, entirely professional.

"Go file a complaint with the Federation about Imperial racism. I'm not asking you to live there. Just get through the checkpoint."

"That's not the point," D muttered, shuffling to the back with the uniform clutched to his chest.

"The oppressed Black brothers of the Empire still live under the shadow of the system, and today, finally, someone speaks up for us—and that someone is me. This is tragic. This is historically tragic—""Keep going and I'll reclassify you as a critical casualty on Bus B," I said.

"Back row it is."

"Wise choice." Jess was laughing hard enough to be a health concern.

"D, you finally found your place in history."

"Shut up." D hunched into the last row, uniform in his lap, and added, with real feeling: "When we get on a ship, I'm the first one out the door. Prove Black guys are useful too."

"That sentence is a problem all by itself," Harvey said.

"You shut up too." Good. Morale was alive. Crooked, but alive. I reopened the shared channel for the final briefing.

"Everyone, listen. If we actually get stopped, three rules. One: say as little as possible. Two: don't look around. Three: if you can't speak Imperial, cry." The bus went quiet. Even Maki glanced up at me. I elaborated, patiently.

"Not a sniffle. Not one artistic tear. I want full collapse—gut-wrenching, soul-tearing, like you just watched your squadmates get shredded and there's nothing left running you but instinct. Cry hard enough, and nobody's going to want to hear you talk. Nikaido handles the rest." Two seconds of silence over the line. Then Nikaido's voice, dry as dust.

"Hoshino. The way you're describing this, I sound like a professional mourner."

"I never said that," I said, entirely sincere.

"You did." This time, even Maki turned her head and laughed, softly. Just once. But I saw it. That was probably the only return on investment I was going to get out of this morning. I tossed a corset to a girl in the front row who was locked in a staring contest with her uniform.

"Move. Five minutes. I want this whole convoy looking like an Imperial cadet escort detail that just survived a massacre. Boys, square your shoulders. Girls, hide the silhouette, hair up, share wigs if you're short. You are not Federation second-years right now. You are Imperial cadets, barely alive, escorting Her Highness to the military port under fire."

"That's an extremely specific backstory," Roy said.

"Specific lies survive longer," I said. Outside the window, the view had changed. The outer-ring architecture of the Imperial capital had given way to something larger, colder, unmistakably military. Perimeter walls. Sensor towers. Sealed access lanes. Warning lights across a distant apron. And behind all of it, half-hidden in morning mist and steel, the silhouettes of ships at berth. The Imperial military spaceport. A place no sane Federation student should ever get close to on a field trip. The bus began to slow.

Not just ours. All five behind it closed the gap, the whole convoy compressing into something that might, from a distance and with some generosity, pass for a battered escort formation. The noise inside faded, piece by piece. The complaints about the corsets stopped. The whining about wig color stopped. Even D had gone genuinely silent in the back row, showing only half a face, radiating institutional oppression. Maki came back to stand beside me. She'd put the Imperial uniform on.

High collar, dark fabric, clean lines. The shift was immediate—she looked like a version of herself I wasn't entirely comfortable admitting suited her: a cold, precise honors cadet who could've passed for Imperial without trying. The problem was how steady she looked doing it. Steady enough that I had a brief, unwelcome thought—if she hadn't ended up running the Federation Seitokai, she might have talked her way through an entire Imperial regiment.

"Nervous?" she asked, quietly.

"A little."

"Doesn't show."

"Because I'm a professional."

"A professional liar."

"Thank you." The bus rolled forward. The checkpoint. Metal barriers, half-lowered. Standard Imperial weapons platforms on both sides. Several fully-kitted port security personnel already turning toward us. One raised a hand for reduced speed. Another checked plates and clearance codes. A third had his gaze fixed straight through the windshield—taking in the rows of blood, bandages, and wreckage visible from the front seat. Good. Look. Finish writing the story for us.

I stood in the center of the aisle and took one last look down the length of the bus. One bus of pale second-years. One bus of hastily improvised Imperial casualties. One bus of people who hadn't learned yet how to commit treason, but had already learned how to perform it. Hedwig sat up front, spine straight. Nikaido's channel had gone silent, which meant she was in position. Maki stood at my side, eyes steady. I took one slow breath, and said it quietly.

"All right, everyone." The bus came to a stop. The Imperial guards began walking toward us. I watched them come, and let a thin, professional smile pull at the corner of my mouth.

"The actors are on."