Chương 444: 210.Heading for Jupiter 2

My footsteps were steady on the way in. At least they sounded steady. The Imperial boots on the deck rang a little too calm, like they were announcing, welcome back, XO, your short absence is over, please retrieve your brain from the Third Princess's cabin and reinstall it at the tactical station. Bodies can come back. Brains are more complicated. Worse, some things aren't brain. They're residual temperature. A look. One sentence that hasn't found a place to land yet.

You can't tag that the way you tag cargo and send it to storage with a damage-control seal. It follows you in like unsanctioned personal baggage. In other words: I was back. Somewhere in my head, a small piece was still on the wrong side of Hedwig's door. And a bridge is exactly the kind of place that sends specialists to pin your face to the wall any time you try to pretend you're fine.

"How's our little princess?" Jess opened fire first. Jess McCallow lounged against her console, grinning like a tabloid reporter who'd just bought exclusive rights to a scandal, eyes bright enough to count as a medical concern. If there were such a job as damage-control officer and romance-novel narrator in one, she'd have applied.

"Did she fall into your arms and go Shimo~, I feel so awful~?" Jess laid it on thick, dragging the last syllables until my skin tried to crawl off my bones purely on physiological grounds.

"Oh, my noble XO—""Shut up, Jess." I hadn't even warmed my seat yet and was already extending a very heartfelt finger.

"Even third-rate poets wouldn't peddle that script on a street corner."

"Ouch. Harsh." Jess didn't look remotely injured. If anything, her smile got sharper.

"So that's a yes on progress?"

"If we could use your brain mass to patch outer armor, our defensive rating would go up five percent."

"I'll take that as a compliment."

"I didn't—""So?" Maki's voice cut in. She sat in the captain's chair, Imperial black uniform looking like it had been tailored to her specifically, clean as a sheathed blade. She didn't layer it in as much as Jess did. Just looked over at me once. One look. Thin. Precise. More effective than shouting.

"Did you hug?" she asked. The bridge stopped for half a second. Then Jess made a noise so lowbrow and heartfelt it barely qualified as human speech.

"Oooooh." My grip on the tactical tablet tightened hard enough to creak.

"For the record, I was gone for about three minutes," I said, flattening my voice into something that sounded like an XO and not like someone with very recent blood pressure issues.

"I put Her Highness through her door and came straight back."

"Really?" Maki asked. Her battlefield scan gaze was bad enough when all it was looking for was stress fractures in my work. Turn it on me personally, and it felt like she was asking whether I'd left any parts of my soul back there by accident.

"A hug would've been acceptable," she said, unhurried.

"A forehead touch also acceptable," Jess immediately seconded, with the enthusiasm of someone attending a seminar that should not exist.

"A cheek nuzzle also—""Jess McCallow." Maki didn't raise her voice. Didn't thump the armrest. But the moment those six syllables dropped, even the climate controls seemed to knock a half-degree off out of respect.

"Another word, and you're on deck watch," she said.

"Eh?" Jess put on a face of theatrical injustice.

"But Captain, I'm supporting the bit. I thought we were doing a duo routine—""Jess," I said, with more sincerity than I'd used in weeks, "shut up."

"You see? Even the XO is being mean to me."

"Which suggests you deserve it," Maki said. Only then did she take her eyes off my face and return to the main display.

"Enough. Fun's over. Back to the meeting." That one sentence had more stopping power than any weapon on the ship. The bridge snapped back into being a bridge. Which is to say: a large, cold, expensive place whose primary function was to send all of us to hell in a very disciplined way if I got my math wrong. I dropped into the XO's chair and woke my console. The blue-white star chart unfurled; the throat of the Orion α corridor glittered like a lovely glass fracture.

Jess's earlier commentary got wedged behind some metaphorical hatch, not gone, but deeply unsuited to the foreground. That was the Asgard's rhythm in miniature. One minute, cheeks and forehead. The next, the mortality statistics of trying to thread a warship through a gravity well. Perfect working conditions.

"I'll set the frame," Maki said. The main projection zoomed down to the corridor—Orion α, narrow as a knife wound.

"We're not here to fight the Empire," she said.

"We're here to get back to the Federation." Nods around the room. Nobody on this bridge was stupid enough to mistake we took the Asgard for we are now invincible. The Freiburg was still burned into everyone's eyes; that didn't mean we could point Mjölnir at the entire Empire and cross names off a list one by one. God-weapons are strong. If an entire empire decides a runaway throne is priority target, it still ends badly. Maki traced a line across the map.

"But to get home, we have to pass through the Orion α corridor." I picked it up.

"And Hohenzollern will be sitting there." The name killed the last of Jess's grin. Hohenzollern. Not a ship. Not a standard fleet. A bone jammed squarely in the Federation's throat. Fortress, blockade, fire-control node, gravity anomalies—every ugly thing in one place, politely waiting for us to show up.

"FTL?" Lan asked, frowning. As Comms, her voice was usually the steadiest. Even she had a thread of reluctance in it now. Just because she handled messages didn't mean she enjoyed delivering bad ones.

"Can't jump?" she added.

"No." Maki's answer was as clean as a death sentence.

"The region's full of gravity anomalies, no-fly zones, and micro black-hole clusters. Even if Yggdrasil was in a generous mood, physics is not going to throw out the rules for our benefit." She paused. Then added, neatly: Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

"If we try to brute-jump, Roy will lose his mind first." Roy Hartmann's smile was closer to a wince. Not humility. It was the expression of a professional helmsman being told to thread a 1, 350 m royal monstrosity through a minefield of gravity pits and baby black holes — and trying to keep his reply socially acceptable.

"Just so it's on record," Roy said, adjusting his gloves like a condemned man straightening his tie, "if it comes to that, I will do my best to keep the ship straight until I snap."

"Touching," Jess said.

"I'm nearly moved to tears."

"That's called schadenfreude," Roy muttered.

"Less commentary, more not-dying," I said, pulling the line tight around the corridor.

"As it stands, our only real option is to force the corridor and deploy Mist of Niflheimr." The system panel spun up in the holo. The Asgard's signature stealth suite—optical distortion that turned a battlewagon into something that might as well be a mirage, visible but impossible to pin. Impressive on paper. In practice, a list of potential failure modes long enough to give any damage-control officer and engineer matching bald spots.

"Theoretically workable," I said.

"The theoretically is not comforting," Jess replied.

"Which means your instincts have finally aligned with reason," I said.

"XO, you are extremely attractive when you're insulting people."

"Thanks. I wasn't trying to be." I was about to go on when a comms chime cut through. Harvey Knox grease-smeared face popped up in the corner. The visual impact was considerable. If the bridge was a royal observatory, the engine room was what civilization looks like when it embraces if it works, it works as doctrine. Harvey stood there with oil and exhaustion streaked across his face, like he'd gone three rounds with four reactors and it was still a split decision.

"Sorry to cut in from Engineering," he said.

"Go ahead," Maki nodded. Harvey drew a breath. His expression was technician-calm—which usually means the news is bad.

"We should find water," he said. The bridge fell silent for two seconds. I blinked. Roy blinked. Lan blinked. You couldn't blame us. It sounded like a bad joke. We were talking about cutting a blockade, crossing a gravity junkyard, stealing a mythological warship home—and Engineering was calling up to say excuse me, can we address our hydration needs first. This is how the solemnity of space warfare dies.

"Ice or liquid will do," Harvey continued.

"I've got four helium-hydrogen reactors running. The sectors that took hits are stable for now, but inventory says our water reserves are low."

"Millennia later, humanity still has a water crisis," Jess intoned, shoulders slumping.

"What was the point of technological progress again?"

"Letting you run your mouth without being sucked out an airlock," I said. Maki skipped over us and went straight to the core.

"Earth water usable?" The look Harvey gave us could be translated as why don't you pour soup into the core and see what happens.

"These are helium-hydrogen reactors, not sewage processors," he said, flicking up a marker on a planet that looked proud of its filth, colored as if industrial civilization had dragged it across the floor several times over.

"If you want to take the whole plant offline in one go, be my guest."

"Got it," Jess nodded.

"So we're not short on water. We're short on water that won't immolate the ship."

"Accurate," Harvey said. I pressed a knuckle to my temple. One special construction ship. Four helium-hydrogen reactors. One erased Emperor-class cruiser. One crew of Federation students in Imperial dress. And we were having a serious debate about where to find decent water. The scene was painfully complete. I dragged down the urge to comment and turned toward Yggdrasil.

"Computer. Recommend sources for solid or liquid water." The AI's voice came back with its usual mix of oracle and customer service.

"Europa. Designation: Jupiter II, 'Europa.'" The main projection shifted. The moon's white ice, ocean underlay, resource tags—exactly the sort of image designed to trigger oh good, water in a tired human brain. Then:"Europa hosts Imperial garrison forces," Yggdrasil added. The bridge cooled right back down. I stared at the tag for two seconds, then couldn't help myself.

"Aren't you technically an Imperial system?" I asked.

"You sound almost Federation right now." The AI didn't even twitch.

"I belong to Her Highness Hedwig." Jess let out a low, significant "wow." I almost joined her. Too straight. Like a knife in the table. Empire, Federation, fleet IDs, doctrine—all instantly demoted. Not the Empire. Not the fleet. Not the system. Hedwig. In its own way, that line fit the Asgard better than the main gun. Noble, arbitrary, dangerous, and completely uninterested in anyone's ethical sequence but its own. I shouldn't have thought of her at a time like this. I did anyway. Her room. That too-quiet air.

Her back held too straight. The moment when something finally cracked just enough for me to see it—not weakness, not begging. A blade that had cut too much steel, shivering once. And the fact that I hadn't hugged her. Hadn't touched her forehead. Hadn't brushed her cheek. Certainly hadn't done anything worth eighteen pages of Jess's worst script. The problem was that sometimes not doing something was more dangerous than doing it. Because that meant it wasn't that you hadn't wanted to.

You'd just recognized the line and left it for later.

"XO?" Lan said, softly. I snapped back and realized I'd been staring at the main projection a little too long.

"... Sorry." I cleared my throat and hauled my thoughts back to the tactical map.

"Europa is an option, but since there's a garrison, that means we treat the resupply as half-assault, half-infiltration." Maki nodded, already steering back to the checklist.

"Set aside sentiment and premium drinking water," she said.

"We need clarity on three points. One: the Asgard cannot make the return run on present reserves. Two: the Hohenzollern blockade line is unavoidable. Three: without reactor water, every plan after this is just a debate over how tidy we want our deaths to look."

"Captain, your summaries are so reassuring," Jess said.

"Then work with the reassurance." Roy raised a hand, like a long-suffering treasurer forced to point out at a class meeting that everyone was about to drive into a wall.

"If we route to Europa, we brush the edge of Jupiter's gravity well. The Asgard can handle it, but we can't afford anything flashy in the way of acceleration, or even a blind garrison will know a monster crawled into the house."

"Comms are messy too," Lan said, frowning.

"Europa sits under an Imperial sensor net. Normal traffic leaves a trail. If we want to slip in, external signal needs to be choked to near nothing—maybe dressed up as an internal Imperial transfer."

"That one's got some legs," Jess said, tapping her chin.

"Whole crew's already in Imperial black. Feels like a waste not to commit to a little impersonation."

"You finally said something useful," I said.

"XO, your compliments remain deeply bent."

"Thanks. My personality is stable."

"That's not something to be proud of..." Roy muttered. I ignored him and cut straight into the operational framework.

"If we go to Europa, three layers." I pulled the tags up.

"One: the Asgard stays hidden—no direct contact with the garrison's main force. Two: a small team hits the resource facility or storage point if needed, priority on high-purity ice and clean liquid water. Three: every contact stays inside the gray zone of anomalous Imperial internal movement—we don't want them concluding on day one that Federation students drove the royal flagship in to steal water."

"I like that tagline," Jess said.

"Filthy and classy at once."

"That's currently the best description of us there is," Maki said, dry. That line landed with a precision I nearly wanted to applaud. Filthy, maintaining posture. From the outside: an Imperial special flagship, an obsidian royal monster, a throne-class weapon that had reduced the Freiburg to space dust. From the inside: a crew of sleep-deprived, emotionally overloaded student officers arguing about reactor water badly enough to want to swear. Absurd. But exactly because it was absurd, it felt real.

"One more thing from Engineering," Harvey said, reclaiming the projection.

"If you're going to Europa, don't drag it out. I can hold this together, but the kind of holding together I mean is more 'the doctor says he's stable for now,' not 'the patient's ready to run a marathon.'""Copy," Maki said.

"Harvey, maintain current status. Send up a list of what you need."

"Understood." He paused, then added: "Also, next person who calls this 'changing a water cooler jug' gets personally invited down here to look at the cores." Jess threw both hands up.

"I retract every insufficiently respectful thing I've said about engineering."

"You'd better." He cut the line, but not before leaving a look that said bridge people, stop making my life harder. Silence, for a moment. Maki looked at the chart. I looked at Maki. We landed on the same conclusion almost in the same second.

"All right." Maki's voice, decisive.

"We go to Europa. Resupply." I updated the tactical overlay as she spoke. The red line re-curved, tracing a dangerous, elegant arc at the edge of Jupiter space.

"Roy. New course," I said.

"Copy, XO."

"Lan. Draft the comms-spoofing contingency."

"Understood."

"Jess. Sit down with DC and figure out what breaks first if Mist of Niflheimr overloads mid-run. Decide what we save and what we can afford to lose."

"On it," Jess said, faster than anyone who'd just spent three minutes fantasizing about a princess falling into my arms had a right to sound.

"Also, I'd just like to note—" I gave her a look. Jess grinned and dropped her voice.

"Seeing you space out like that, I'm about ninety percent convinced you actually did just drop her off. If you'd stayed three more minutes, XO, you probably wouldn't be walking a straight line right now." I very nearly introduced her face to the tactical tablet. Unfortunately, being XO means a lot of the job is not doing the thing you very much want to do.

"Jess," I said, expression blank.

"One more word and I'm asking Maki to test that deck-watch threat for real."

"XO," Maki said, flat, "you don't need to ask." Jess zipped her mouth shut with an exaggerated gesture. The bridge went back to work. Course calculations, comms masks, stealth parameters, reactor load estimates—lines of data slid through the air. Everyone returned to their stations, like an orchestra that had just been thrown down a flight of stairs, regrouping and forcing itself back into tempo. I sat in the XO's chair, staring at the curve toward Europa, and on the surface, reset myself to standard mode. Calm.

Clear. Executable. Like this was who I'd always been. Only I knew it wasn't complete. Some set of nerves was still just inside a cabin door, in a room that had been too quiet, too close, and too dangerous. Still caught on a pair of eyes that had seen too much already and had, for about three seconds, seen nothing but me. Ridiculous. I'd gone to put her to bed, not to give myself a new neurosis. The Asgard did not care.

She'd been built to collect problems: the Empire, the Federation, a princess, a fugitive fleet, reactors, water, blockades, and now, apparently, a set of arrhythmias that had no place on an XO's duty shift. I blew out a slow breath and raised my eyes to Europa on the main projection. Ice. Water. Imperial garrison. Good. Compared to the quiet in that room, all of these belonged to a category of danger I actually knew how to handle.

"Asgard. New heading, Jupiter route," Maki ordered. I came in on the beat, the way we always did.

"All hands to low-observable cruise procedures," I said.

"Prepare to approach Europa." The moment the order went down, the hull picked up a low resonant hum. Not comfort. Not inspiration. More like a beast in the dark rolling one shoulder, settling its weight for the next long hunt. The Asgard moved. And I finally admitted something to myself. I had walked back from Hedwig's cabin to the bridge. Something else was going to take longer.