Chương 445: 211.Peak of Luxury 1

To keep us from turning ourselves into an expensive space coffin before we ever reached Europa, the whole ship ended up honestly respecting Harvey's professional opinion. That sounds very civilized, but translated into plain speech it means—if the chief engineer doesn't nod, we'd better not push our luck.

After all, on a custom-built royal warship, there are three kinds of people you should never offend: the one who can fire the main guns, the one who decides where you go, and the one who can keep the whole ship breathing. Harvey happened to be the third kind. What makes that type frightening is that they normally walk around covered in grease and talk like they're banging a wrench on steel plate—but the moment they're unhappy, the ship's future suddenly turns deeply philosophical.

So we adopted a high-constant-acceleration cruise on the lowest navigation mode. In human terms—slower, steadier, don't burn fuel like idiots. In this mode, consumption across the four helium-hydrogen reactors was pressed to a minimum, and Asgard spread its solar-wind sails, moving in a low-consumption posture so elegant it was annoying.

When the external monitor feed cut in, for a moment I doubted I was looking at the mythic-class monster that had just vaporized an Imperial battlecruiser, rather than a luxury cruising vessel headed off on holiday. The obsidian hull unfolded its thin-winged sail surfaces slowly in the dim light around Jupiter, the structures spreading along both flanks like some cold, ceremony-minded giant bird stretching its wings.

I'd always felt Asgard's temperament was more like a throne, a mausoleum, a jewel-draped execution platform. Only in that moment did I realize the ship had another face—not that it wasn't dangerous, but that it wrapped danger in luxury, and even saved energy like an aristocratic display. For one thing, this kind of low-consumption cruise could slip past the Imperial early-warning detection radars built specifically to catch high-speed targets. For another—God as my witness—we students genuinely needed to relax.

Me especially. I leaned back in the XO's seat, watched the course line stretch slowly across the main projection, and felt that everything that had happened lately was enough to age my mental age by a dozen years on the spot. A normal person's school trip is roughly: ride a bus, take photos, get roll-called by the teacher, sneak snacks at night.

Ours was: seize a custom-built Imperial royal warship, fire the main guns to vaporize our pursuers, walk the Third Princess back to her cabin, and then start worrying about reactor water. I suspect if this keeps up, the yearbook will just add a caption beside my photo—eighteen years old, middle-aged.

"XO, your face looks like you just paid off a lifetime of mortgages in three minutes." Jess dropped that comment on her way past me without a shred of tact. I couldn't even be bothered to lift an eyelid.

"Shut up. Keep it up and I'll send you to the engine room so Harvey can do your counseling with a wrench." Jess shrank her neck in immediately. Good. Apparently on this ship, Harvey's deterrent value outranked even the XO's authority. Perfectly reasonable. A XO can only hold grudges; a chief engineer can actually cut your power. Just as Asgard settled smoothly into its low-consumption cruise rhythm, Maki gave another order.

"Everyone." Maki stood before the captain's chair, her voice not loud, and yet every person on the bridge straightened up without thinking.

"Change back into Federation uniforms." For half a second, the bridge went quiet. Not because anyone failed to understand—because everyone understood. We'd worn the Imperial black uniforms to infiltrate, to confuse, to squeeze through the seams of the Imperial system while Asgard had just fallen into our hands. But that was over now. Since the capital already knew the ship had been stolen, the whole Empire had probably put us on its most ornate wanted list by now.

Running around in Imperial uniforms any longer had no tactical value left—only irony. Plainly put: the play was over. Time to admit who we were. So the mood on the bridge suddenly turned a little like a graduation ceremony. Except other people's graduations involve taking off a uniform, smiling for photos, and getting ready to run toward the future.

Ours involved peeling off Imperial black mid-escape, pulling the Federation uniform back on, and confirming along the way that what lay ahead was Europa's ice sheet, the Empire's eyes and ears, and that dead bone called Hohenzollern stuck in the road home. Extremely youthful. Youthful enough to make you want to call the police. I went back to the cabin temporarily assigned to me and hung the Imperial black uniform up.

The cut really was handsome—cleanly black, crisply hard—and it gave whoever wore it a coldness that didn't belong to a student. A few days ago I'd used it to deceive people, to press them down, to hold a scene together by force; now it hung there quietly, suddenly like a face taken off after the play ended. And putting the Federation uniform back on felt strange. Familiar, and yet a little foreign.

Like you'd been away from yourself too long, and coming back you actually needed a second or two to confirm: ah, so this is the color I was supposed to be wearing all along. When I walked back onto the bridge, Roy was looking down adjusting his cuffs. The Federation uniform made him look more like the student council treasurer in the flesh than he had in Imperial black—less of a soldier, more of an honest "I really don't want to lose my credits and my life in the same place."

Lan stood beside him straightening his shoulder line, moving as naturally as if it were a small thing she'd done countless times. If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

"That's better," Lan said.

"You mean me, or the uniform?" Roy asked with a smile.

"Both," Lan answered very calmly—calmly enough that bystanders automatically wanted to cough twice and look away. I quietly moved my eyes elsewhere. A school trip, a ship hijacking, an escape, plus a couple conducting interactions on the bridge that had zero tactical value and effectively raised bystanders' blood pressure—this work's genre tags were probably beyond saving. Over on the other side, Jess was slinging her Federation uniform jacket onto her shoulder and sighing heavily.

"I have to admit, the Imperial black does more for the waistline," Jess said seriously.

"Then you can wear it for the wanted poster's promotional shot," I said.

"XO, you still talk so romantically."

"Thanks. I'm not providing emotional value today."

"Did you provide any yesterday?" I gave Jess a look. Jess looked at me. Jess seemed to suddenly realize which line she'd stepped over, immediately made a zipping-her-mouth gesture, and even took a step back on her own, looking as devout as if she'd just finished confessing to the main guns. Good. Human beings do learn eventually. Maki changed back into her Federation uniform faster than anyone. Honestly, on Maki that outfit looked more like "captain" than any routine student council assembly I could remember.

Probably because she'd just issued a string of orders—fire, turn, evade detection, everyone change clothes—that would have overheated an ordinary student's brain on the spot. The same Federation uniform on her carried a pressure that said: if the school rulebook grew legs, this is roughly what it would look like. She stood before the captain's chair, swept her eyes over everyone, and nodded, as if confirming that they'd all finally molted out of an abnormal disguise. Then the bridge door opened again.

Hedwig was back. In that instant, I felt my spine go rigid for a fraction of a second. Not from fear. It's that the body is sometimes far more honest than the mouth. The mouth can pretend nothing's wrong, the eyes can pretend to be professional—only the nerve endings, the moment that person appears, will sign for the truth on your behalf without any regard for your face. Hedwig hadn't changed back into a Federation uniform, and of course that was impossible.

She was still the Empire's Third Princess, still like a slender blade draped in etiquette and bloodline—clean, restrained, carrying a nobility that never showed on its face. But compared with before she'd gone back to her cabin, her bearing had clearly been gathered back up, as if the interior that had split open for a moment had been buttoned layer by layer back into the depths of her chest, leaving only the calm on the surface that was enough to face the whole ship. Truly impressive.

And truly, infuriatingly impressive. Because someone finally loosens a little in front of you, and the next time you meet she's buttoned it back up herself. It feels like you'd just touched a bit of fire, and the next second the other person shuts the stove door and asks you coolly whether you misread it. Hedwig walked to the command seat. No small talk—her first sentence went straight to business.

"Before we reach Europa, there's something to deal with first." She raised a hand, and Yggdrasil responded at once; several pale-gold authorization light frames unfolded around the command seat, like some royal rite compressed into a pragmatist's edition.

"I am assigning part of Asgard's royal-level operating authority to Kushima Maki and Hoshino Shimo." The bridge went so quiet that even breathing became audible. Even Jess's mouth actually closed. The scene was rare enough to belong in the ship's records. Yggdrasil's steady voice sounded at the same time.

"Confirmed. Newly authorized personnel: Kushima Maki, Hoshino Shimo. Authority level: secondary command authority, tactical dispatch authority, emergency system invocation authority." The pale-gold light unfolded before my eyes like a very cold mist, then settled silently into my terminal. In that moment I understood clearly: this wasn't just a feature being unlocked. This was recognition. Recognition that we weren't only the people who'd taken this ship. But the people who could fly it home with her.

Maki raised her head and looked at Hedwig.

"Are you sure?" Maki asked.

"Asking that now—don't you think it's a little late?" Hedwig said mildly. The corner of Maki's mouth moved very slightly. Translated into plain speech, that expression probably meant—fine, I'll take it. Then Hedwig turned to me. Just one brief glance. Brief enough that anyone else would probably take it for a normal visual check. But to me, too much remained in that glance.

The unfinished thing in that room, the crack that had just been forced back down, and a kind of almost silent trust—all of it hidden at the very bottom of her gaze, not leaking a single thread, and yet making it impossible for the person who saw it to pretend they hadn't. I cleared my throat and looked away. Good, Hoshino Shimo. Now you've got XO, tactical officer, and royal-level secondary authorization. Congratulations. Arrhythmia comes free with it. Asgard really does have excellent after-sales service.

"Since the authority's been assigned," Maki said, pulling everyone back onto the business track, "let's look at Europa." The main projection switched. A moon covered in white ice shell surfaced rotating at the center of the bridge, beautiful as an illustration from an astronomy textbook—assuming that textbook honestly noted: this place is cold, lethal, and full of Imperial troops; do not develop a longing for it. I pulled up the data and, reading as I went, produced the summary best suited to my mood.

"The conclusion is simple," I said.

"Extreme cold. Strong surface radiation. The Imperial base isn't on the surface—it's built under the ice shell, hanging inverted from the underside of the ice." Jess scrunched up her face.

"Wait. Inverted?"

"Right." I enlarged the cross-section so the base unfolded in full—it looked like some parasitic metal organ.

"It's not sitting on the ice, it's hanging beneath it. Thick ice above, ocean below. The base itself looks like a whole string of steel stalactites growing downward."

"I hate that description," Roy said.

"But it's accurate," Lan added, twisting the knife.

"The good news is, water supply is abundant," I went on.

"The bad news is, the Imperial troops here really can't be left alone." Maki crossed her arms, looked at the three-dimensional image of the inverted base, and her expression turned grave. I lit up another set of markers and pulled out the intelligence link between the Europa base and the Hohenzollern blockade belt.

"This isn't just a garrison point," I said.

"The Imperial base on Europa is the eyes and ears Hohenzollern has extended outward. It may not be the heaviest link in the firepower chain, but it's certainly one of the ones we have the most reason to fear. If Asgard is detected here, then what comes after isn't a question of 'harder to get through.'" I paused to let everyone swallow that.

"It's that we almost certainly won't get through at all." The bridge went quiet again. Outside, Asgard kept cruising slowly along, elegant in a way that felt out of place. Inside, everyone's nerves tightened at the same moment. This is reality. You can have just changed back into your own uniform. You can have just walked out of a dangerous intimacy that was never put into words. You can even have just felt that you finally had two minutes to breathe. But the Empire won't pause its pursuit because you're tired.

And the universe won't get easier just because your feelings are complicated. Staring at the hologram of Europa, I couldn't help feeling that the ice-white moon was a snare wrapped in a snow shell. Inside was the water we needed most, and the traces we least ought to leave. The place might as well have been tailor-made for Asgard—luxurious, dangerous, cold as a work of art on the surface, and full of lethal mechanisms within. Honestly? Very much this ship's style.

I raised my eyes to the command seat, the captain's chair, and the newly added authority interface lit up in front of me. And then it struck me: before we actually set foot on Europa, maybe we'd finally have a little time to see clearly just what kind of monster we were driving forward. After all, to take Asgard back to the Federation through the Empire's teeth, we'd at least need to understand how many cards this absurdly luxurious warship was still holding. And I had a feeling.

Water was definitely not the only problem among them.