Chương 462: 218.Elegant Bandits 1

Deep in the debris field, the Asgard crouched between the dark and the broken stone, a beast that had learned how to hide even its own breathing. Seen from outside, she barely read as a ship at all. More like a shard of shadow that had no business existing anywhere in the universe. Cold. Steady. Expensive. Dangerous. That sense of order she'd carried on the bridge just minutes ago—the clean geometry of commands, screens, and light—turned into something else entirely the moment you stepped past the main display.

Out here, in the dark, she felt less like a warship and more like a beautifully finished accomplice to a crime. And we were the hounds she'd just let loose from between her ribs. The instant Egersund II broke from its cradle, the whole craft gave the faintest shudder, then slid forward as if someone had kicked it from behind. The attitude thrusters along both flanks lit in sequence—blue-white streaks flaring and gone, stringing a few short trails of ghost-fire through the gaps in the rock field.

The projection ahead of the pilot's seat bloomed open, and the Royal's wireframe turned half a circle in the dark: thirteen decks of gaudy, self-satisfied capitalism, a hull so enormous it currently looked like a cream cake set out on a silver tray. Except we hadn't come to cut the cake tonight. We'd come to make it scream.

I sat forward, starboard side, cinched my restraints tight again, and gave a downward tug at the costume that was scientifically engineered to destroy a normal person's dignity—the phantom-thief prince getup. Cape. Half-mask. Gold trim that served no tactical function whatsoever. Decorative piping that actively worked against clean movement and insisted on existing anyway. On an ordinary day I wouldn't have touched this thing with gloves on.

But the second you're actually strapped into an assault craft, diving straight at a luxury liner that only takes bookings from the nobility, it starts to make a certain kind of sense. Not aesthetic sense. Humiliation sense. Jess sat on my left. Maki had ordered her into a standard surrealist artist mask tonight, and she was clearly still nursing a grudge over losing her 'deputy costume privileges.'

She checked the restraint line and the paralysis pistol at her hip, staring at the target projection with eyes that were far too bright, radiating a very unhealthy level of anticipation.

"I still think," Jess said, tugging her balaclava up a fraction, voice thick with regret, "that if I were wearing the deputy's long coat too, our whole formation would look a lot more complete."

"Complete my ass." I didn't look over.

"Your one job tonight is not meowing into the open channel a second time." Jess went quiet for two seconds. Then, with total sincerity:"What if the moment really calls for it?" I turned and looked at her. The balaclava covered most of her face. Only her eyes showed. Problem was, even just the eyes told me everything: I'm not joking. I'm genuinely running the numbers on this. I gave her a flat look.

"Then I pack you into a supply crate, slap a 'Highly Flammable' sticker on it, and ship you back to Medical." Jess grinned instantly.

"So mean."

"It's called damage control before the damage happens." D, on the other side, didn't join our little strain of team toxicity. He kept his head down, re-securing a heavy armor plate to his forearm mount. Black tactical gear, that Dali mask, shoulders wide enough to double as a spare bulkhead door. Looking at him, you wouldn't think he was prepping to board a ship. You'd think he was planning to punch a tunnel straight through the middle of the Royal using his own body. The students going with D were just as quiet.

They had the bridge—take the nerve center fast, hard, and clean, before the Royal could get her alarms and her distress call out in the same breath. As for my side. We had the main hall. Which meant we were here to put on a show. Just thinking those two words gave me a complicated feeling. Executive Officer. Tactical Officer. Test subject in a classified Federation program.

Currently one of the people on the Asgard who most needed to avoid embarrassing herself—and here I was, in a phantom-thief prince costume, about to lead a squad into a room full of high nobility and give them a live-fire seminar on frontier reality. If this ever went into a service file, even the enemy might observe a moment of silence for me. If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. A report came from the pilot's seat.

"Short jump prep complete." Egersund II's steady glide bled into a light deceleration. In the projection, the Royal continued along her scheduled lane with total serenity, solar sails already retracted, leaving only the rings of overdone decorative lighting around her hull—a glowing skeleton that belonged exclusively to the upper class. She looked unhurried. Magnificent. Arrogant in a way that felt entirely natural, as if the universe itself had always been expected to step aside for something like her.

Watching her, I finally understood what Jess had meant about needing some shock therapy. Because some people aren't evil. They've just never once been touched by anything real.

"Trajectory locked," the pilot reported.

"Short-range wormhole simulator online. Exit point projected six hundred meters off the Royal's aft-starboard, low." Six hundred meters. For standard ship-to-ship contact, that distance bordered on rude. For a boarding craft, it was the exact, awkward sweet spot—close enough to trip their threat boards, too close for them to manage a clean response before it was already too late. I took a slow breath and settled back.

Unlike the Asgard's full ceremonial warp transitions, Egersund II's short jump carried none of that weight, none of that sense that you were being squeezed through a gap in the laws of physics. It felt cleaner. More like a precise, surgical tear. The starfield ahead gave one small twist. Like someone had pinched a tiny fold into a black curtain. The next second, Egersund II was gone from its old coordinates and spat back out at the edge of the Royal's shadow.

The whole thing happened too fast to leave room for anything romantic. Good. I prefer it unromantic. Because a real assault should never be romantic.

"Exit complete."

"Target in visual." The Royal had clearly picked us up at the same instant. Her aft thrusters flared once. The exterior lighting shifted into an alert pattern. Sections of hull armor began rotating slowly—like someone in full evening dress finally, belatedly registering: wait, that's not a guest.

"They've spotted us," Jess said.

"No shit." I watched the huge, glittering hull attempt a dignified acceleration.

"We're basically stepping on her hem. If she still hadn't noticed, I'd feel sorry for her." The Royal began to turn. Not fast. If anything, sluggish. Too much hull, too comfortable a design, too easy a transit lane—this ship was never built for emergency evasion. To put it more unkindly: the worst crisis a ship like this usually faced was a delay in the champagne service, not a military assault craft coming at her like a hound that had caught a scent.

"Paralysis pulse. Stand by." The forward weapons module was already rotating out by the time I finished speaking. This wasn't for blowing a hole in her. However badly the Royal deserved her lesson, we weren't here to flip thirteen decks of aristocratic excess upside down. This shot had exactly one job: bite the leg, pin the prey.

"Fire." A blue pulse shot from Egersund II's nose. No fireball. No explosion. Just a line of light, cold as a scalpel, cutting straight into the seam between the Royal's aft propulsion nodes and her outer power ring. Almost in the same second, the drive halos at her stern buckled. The barely-maintained acceleration collapsed on the spot. Main engines, dead. Backup thrusters, delayed.

The whole Royal lurched like a noblewoman missing a step on a grand staircase—tweaking her back in front of the entire room, then working very hard to pretend she hadn't.

"Hit." Akari's voice came through the internal channel, cold in a way that was almost satisfying.

"She can't even run away gracefully now."

"So vicious," Jess sighed, admiring.

"Thank you," Akari said, flat. Egersund II didn't give her a single second to fix her posture. Full thrust. Bow down. The craft lunged at the stalling luxury liner like a predator that had finally found its opening. The Royal filled the viewport, growing larger, her gilded, pointless hull ornamentation coming into sharper focus with every second—sharp enough to make you want to ask her designer whether she'd built a ship or painted a target on every rich fool in the sector.

Three seconds to contact, and the cabin snapped tight. The laughing stopped. The banter stopped. Everyone locked down their breathing at their stations. D leaned forward slightly, a mountain about to break loose from its own foundation. Jess hooked her fingers into the edge of her harness, eyes bright as the last second before a floodgate opens. In the back, the others gave their balaclavas one final tug, paralysis pistols and restraint gear shifted into ready-draw position. This was what the second time felt like.

None of the novelty of the first. None of that absurd hesitation—are we really doing this—from before. Just competence. And competence is usually more dangerous than impulse.

"Contact." Thud. Not a violent crash. A calculated, vicious bite. Egersund II drove in at an angle against the Royal's flank, grappling claws snapping out first and locking down hard into the plating. A heartbeat later, cables shot free, steel lines pulled taut, and the whole assault craft clung to the massive hull like a parasite that had found its host.

Then the boarding spike extended from beneath the bow—slender, ominous, a mosquito's proboscis built to warship scale—and drove itself into the Royal's skin without hesitation. The cutting ring spun up. The pressure seal deployed. The docking countdown appeared. I pressed my mask down and stood.

"All teams, stand by." The cabin lights shifted to tactical red. The strip lighting along the bulkheads lit up segment by segment. The Royal's internal layout had already been split into two routes—the blocking for a performance that had absolutely no right to be called a performance. D's team: straight for the upper control decks and the bridge. My team: down the central spine to the main hall. Simply put—they were going for the throat. We were going to make sure the whole ship saw the knife.

I raised a hand, flicked the route map forward.

"D, you've got the upper level."

"Got it."

"I'm taking the hall." D nodded once. No wasted words. That's what I like about working with him. However much of a mountain he looks like the rest of the time, the moment it's time to split routes, he's cleaner than anyone. You don't have to worry he'll misread it. You don't have to worry he'll ask more than he needs to. He nods, and then he actually walks the line. Jess stepped up to my flank, eyes fixed under her balaclava on the hatch as the locks began to cycle. She didn't say anything. Neither did I.

At this point, one more word would've just been noise. The last lock light on the boarding hatch turned green. Pressure equalized. The Royal's interior corridor waited on the other side of the door. The moment the hatch opened, I smelled the Royal.