Chương 463: 218.Elegant Bandits 2

Not oil. Not metal. Not the usual warship mix of scorch and sweat you get after a boarding fight. What drifted through was perfume, alcohol, expensive fabric, floral preservative, and the particular slackness that only people who have been comfortable for far too long ever manage to cultivate. To put it plainly: It smelled expensive. And it was asking to be robbed. We pushed down the central corridor toward the main hall, boots landing not on standard plating but on a dark, soft, non-slip surface.

Warm gold sconces lined the walls. A vaulted ceiling stretched ahead in an arch, and the sculptures set into every corner cost more than the emergency signage on our last ship. The Royal wasn't a vessel. The Royal was the sentence "I have a great deal of money and I don't need to justify existing," stacked thirteen decks high. D's voice came low over the comm.

"Approaching upper level. No external alarms yet."

"Copy," I said.

"Entering the hall." Jess had already peeled the balaclava off; the fitted jacket underneath was the closest thing to a costume she had been allowed tonight, which was perfect for causing trouble. She was running hot, like a cat looking at an entire aisle of self-rolling yarn. If I hadn't warned her ahead of time, she'd already be inside charging admission and launching a loyalty-points program for the Black Cat Thieves.

The double doors to the main hall swung open, and for a second I thought I'd wandered into the wrong room and crashed some nouveau-riche wedding. The atrium climbed thirteen decks straight up, ringed galleries edged in gold like the cross-section of a tiered cake. A crystal chandelier fell from the very top, bright enough that it looked like someone had ground up stars and poured the dust into glass.

On the stage below, a soprano was hitting a high note, the orchestra swelling in perfect step beside her, and the floor was a sea of jewels, gowns, wineglasses, and the particular bored expression of people who have never had to do anything. I'd assumed that, faced with uninvited guests like us, this crowd—if they had a spine between them—would manage one of two normal reactions. One: reach for a weapon. Two: scream and run. Neither happened. They hadn't even decided yet whether they were supposed to be afraid.

So I decided for them. I raised the one antique powder pistol still left in the whole armory, pointed it at the ceiling, cocked it clean, and pulled the trigger. Bang! The shot went off through the hall. Very loud. Loud enough that my own ears rang. The soprano cut off mid-note. The violinist's bow skidded, sending the pitch careening off into another star system. The chandelier gave a faint shiver, and the entire sea of nobility finally produced a single collective expression: this was not on the program.

I stepped forward into the silence. Cape swept back. Mask set. The muzzle still trailing a thread of smoke from the blank.

"Good evening, my lords and ladies." My voice carried through the hall's acoustics, sounding more convincing than I expected.

"We are the Black Cat Thieves. We're here to conduct—" I paused, then added, with great courtesy:"—an involuntary donation drive." The whole room froze. Not the freeze of terror. Not shock. More like the look of people who'd only ever met danger through stage plays, novels, and gossip, suddenly discovering that danger in person dressed better than they did, and that it had brought along a fully equipped armed team. Nobody moved. So I walked up onto the stage.

The singer, the orchestra, even the emcee smiling and nodding off to the side—I cleared them all with a single look. They had no idea who I was, but it was obvious I had more claim to this stage than anyone on the original program. I walked to center stage and picked up the microphone.

"Now. Listen for my instructions." I looked out over the crowd, voice clean and clear.

"Men on the left. Women on the right." I paused. Someone was standing dead center, looking hopelessly lost.

"And you—in the middle. Want a private VIP section arranged just for you?" I'd expected that line to buy me some normal chaos. Gasps. Screaming. Gowns dragged across the floor in a panic. Some count losing it and shouting where the guards were. None of that happened. The silence held half a second. Then someone started clapping. Clap. Clap. Clap. Sparse at first. Then it spread, section by section, like an infection.

Within a few seconds the whole hall was thundering with applause, loud enough my mind actually went blank for a moment. I stood there with the microphone, genuinely unsure whether to question the mental state of the Imperial aristocracy, or whether that shot had rattled something loose in my own skull. Voices started bubbling up below.

"Did you see that, my lord? Absolutely magnificent."

"My god, I never thought I'd live to be robbed in person. What luck."

"Is this an immersive show—some new concept on the Royal?"

"I'm posting this the second we're home.""' Black Cat Thieves'—what a stylish name." I stood there, silent. In that one second I understood something with total clarity. The truly frightening thing about class difference isn't that they have money. It's that they can package their own fear as entertainment before they've even finished being afraid. Jess, off to the side of the stage, was already losing it.

She fought to keep a straight face while waving a few of our people down to "assist with the donations," but her eyes gave the whole thing away—pure, delighted vindication: I knew these nobles were out of their minds. I took a breath and decided to ride the farce all the way to the end.

"Excellent." I tightened my grip on the mic, dropped my voice a register.

"You're all considerably more cooperative than I expected. Now, please follow the team's instructions and complete your donations in an orderly fashion. No running. No pushing. And don't you dare pretend you forgot your jewelry." Someone actually laughed. Not a hysterical laugh. Not a shocked one. A real one. The kind that means this is fun. And that's when things truly hit peak absurdity—when that woman came charging out of the crowd.

She was wearing enough wealth to blind two working-class citizens at once, and she moved so fast even Jess didn't manage to cut her off. That wasn't the speed of an ordinary noblewoman. That was the speed of something that had been caged by etiquette for years and had just spotted a new thrill.

"Black Cat Prince—!" Her voice had genuine structural integrity. Before I could react, her hem caught on the edge, and she pitched forward, straight toward the sharp edge of the stage. I moved on instinct—one step, one arm out, and caught her. Narrow waist. Overpowering perfume. She fell into me with a highly theatrical little gasp. I looked down at her face, glowing with excitement, and thought: life is just one trap after another. But I'd caught her. The show had to go on.

I dropped my voice into a register I'd like to formally apologize to myself for, and said, slowly:"Careful, my lady." I steadied her, leaned in just slightly. Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

"It would be a shame if you got hurt." Her eyes went wide. And then a whole section of women in the hall reacted as if someone had reached in and plucked a nerve. First the suppressed gasps. Then the wave.

"Oh my god."

"Did he just catch her?"

"That voice—""I can't. I genuinely cannot."

"Black Cat Prince—look over here—" A vein jumped in my temple. You have got to be kidding me. Jess had abandoned all pretense of professionalism. She was collecting donations while laughing hard enough to threaten her balance, looking exactly like some unscrupulous manager cashing in on a meet-and-greet that had spiraled completely out of control. Worse—the collection rate was terrifying.

Noblewomen who by rights should have been a nightmare to shake down were now voluntarily shoving jewelry, credit chips, private bonds, and antique cases into Jess's arms, faces lit up like they were bidding at a charity gala.

"Do you take this too?"

"If I donate more, can I get a photo with the Black Cat Prince?"

"I'd like to give anonymously—but could you ask him to say 'careful, my lady' one more time?"

"I have a set of antique earrings here—does that count as bonus support?" Standing center stage, I no longer felt like I was committing robbery. I felt like I was hosting an upper-class charity auction that had derailed past the point of any possible recovery. And I was the headline act. That thought alone made me want to resign on the spot. The woman I'd caught was still hanging off my sleeve, face flushed like she'd been steeped in liquor.

"Black Cat Prince..." Her voice had an actual tremor in it.

"If this ship needs a noble and cooperative hostage, I—I would be entirely willing to volunteer." I went quiet for a second. The women around her erupted at once.

"Wait, volunteering's allowed?"

"That's completely unfair!"

"Take me too!"

"Take me instead—my family's asset structure is much better suited for long-term extortion." I genuinely began to wonder whether these people were nobility, or some strange, elevated organism that had been sealed inside a champagne tower so long its entire judgment system had corroded through. I carefully peeled her fingers off my sleeve, holding my expression together through sheer will.

"We appreciate your enthusiasm, my lady." Said with immense restraint, and at considerable cost.

"But this team doesn't currently offer a hostage-experience package." She looked genuinely disappointed. A few sighs of sympathy rose from the floor. Jess had given up on standing straight and was holding on to the donation crate for support. I shot her a look that could kill. She threw both hands up in surrender—though with her arms full of loot, she looked less like someone repenting and more like someone already drafting tonight's revenue report. Fortunately, our time was almost up.

D's voice came through, clipped.

"Bridge secure. Clear to withdraw." Good. At least someone on this ship remembered why we were here. I raised the mic one last time and addressed the hall, still buzzing.

"This team is grateful for your cooperation." My tone was even, with a suspicious amount of politeness.

"Tonight's involuntary donation drive is now concluded. Please enjoy the rest of your voyage. And remember—" I paused, sincerely hoping this line would never end up engraved on some commemorative plaque.

"The Black Cat Thieves thank you for your generous support." I set down the mic, turned, and walked off stage. Behind me, another wave of applause and screaming broke loose. Cutting through it, one voice, absurdly loud:"Black Cat Prince—come back soon—!" I nearly tripped over my own cape. Jess was laughing herself breathless beside me, but professional enough to keep pace on the withdrawal.

A few of our people trailed behind, arms full of tonight's "enthusiastic support," expressions uniformly dazed—clearly still failing to process how robbing a noble cruise liner had turned into a fan meet. It wasn't until I was back aboard Egersund II that I finally let out the breath I'd been holding since the main hall doors. Jess slammed the loot crate into its rack and finally let herself laugh out loud.

"Shimo."

"Shut up."

"Black Cat Prince~""Jess. I will actually hit you." She grinned like a lit-up sign.

"I'm just saying—your ratings tonight must have gone through the roof." I pulled off the mask and sank into my seat. It hit me, all at once, that compared to those nobles, the one who might actually need the shock therapy was me. Because I hadn't seen it coming. The second fat sheep hadn't handed over their money out of fear. They'd bought a ticket and enjoyed the show. That night, the second watch at Outpost AU-1206 finally learned something.

The most terrifying thing in the universe isn't necessarily an enemy warship. It might just be a call from an aristocrat. The first time a report came in about the "Black Cat Thieves," the duty officers all made faces like they'd swallowed a screw, but at least the shape of the incident had made sense. Merchant ship intercepted, goods taken, perpetrators self-identifying as a thief crew.

However absurd, it still fit somewhere inside the thick grey Imperial border-duty manual—the one heavy enough to club a man unconscious. The second time was different. The second time, the red light on the comm board lit up flagged straight to the noble priority channel, and the source ship read out clean: the luxury liner Royal. The duty NCO needed exactly one look before the chill hit his spine. Because the Royal wasn't some battered spice-runner hauling a few rich provincials.

She was thirteen decks, aristocracy-only, the kind of ship whose manifest font alone radiated "commoners, keep back." When a ship like that had an incident, the trouble didn't stop at the incident. It grew relatives. It grew family crests. It grew a whole chain of accountability worse than any battle-loss report. The moment the channel opened, the first sound in the duty room wasn't crying. It wasn't a distress call either. It was a woman's voice, trembling, right at the edge of tears, delivering an accusation.

"Please—send a ship immediately—right now—they went too far!" The duty major let out half a breath of relief. Good. Normal. Unfortunately, before that half-breath finished leaving his body, the rest of her sentence arrived and dragged his soul out through his collar.

"How could they stage a robbery to look exactly like a formal gala performance?!" Two seconds of silence in the duty room. The recording lieutenant looked up. The legal officer, mid-page in the regulations, slowly pressed his hand flat against the book. The comms NCO checked the waveform with a blank expression, half-suspecting a malfunction had patched in the entertainment feed from some nearby ballroom. It hadn't. This was a report. A very serious one.

"Please state your current situation," the major said, in the voice of a man trying very hard to still believe he lived in a sane universe.

"Number of hostiles, level of armament, any casualties—""No casualties! That's not the issue!" A different voice cut in—sounded like the Royal's General Affairs Officer, and clearly worse off than the first caller.

"The issue is they timed their entrance perfectly with our main hall lighting cue! Chandelier dims, side lights come up, and that girl in the theatrical costume just walks out of the smoke! That's not piracy, that's rehearsed—no, wait, of course it's piracy, they took the jewelry cases—but they did it so politely!" The recording lieutenant's pen froze in midair. He looked down at what he'd already written. — Suspects courteous while removing property.

He stared at the line and, for the first time in twelve years of officer training, genuinely wondered if something had gone wrong somewhere in his education. The other end of the line had clearly dissolved into chaos. Women crying in the background. A man shouting about why every security drone had gone dark. Someone else, somewhere, sounding dreamy, like they'd just watched an opera curtain call. Then an elderly voice, far too excited for its age, shoved its way to the front of the mic.

"I'd like to add something." The major closed his eyes. He didn't want to hear it. But Imperial officers don't run from duty.

"Go ahead."

"The young lady in charge had an excellent sense of register. She first asked us to stay calm, then explained this was not a robbery but—quoting directly—'a highly voluntary, fully dignified evening fundraiser with a strong emphasis on social redistribution.' Which is, of course, absurd. Utterly absurd. Absurd to the point of offense. However—" The old man drew a breath. His tone turned suddenly solemn.

"She complimented my brooch. Said it had excellent historical weight." In the duty room, the recording lieutenant quietly set down his pen. He was starting to suspect that even a word-for-word transcript would get filed by his superiors as a night-shift hallucination. The line wasn't finished. Another woman pushed forward.

"They took my sapphire bracelet! I am extremely displeased! It was my mother's! But the girl with the black ribbon told me my shoulder line tonight was worth more attention than the stones. Saying something like that, at a time like that—isn't that just a little too calculating?!"

"Is that the point?!" the General Affairs Officer shouted in the background.

"Of course it's the point!" the woman snapped.

"And then she told me not to stand under the main light because it flattened my skirt's layering. Do you know what I did? I stepped back. On instinct. I adjusted my own blocking while being robbed." The legal officer slowly raised his eyes to the major.

"Sir."

"Go on."

"There's no precedent in Imperial criminal code for 'victim cooperated with stage blocking during a piracy incident.'""I know."

"There's also none for 'suspect moonlighting as etiquette consultant.'"" I know that too." By the time he finished the sentence, the major looked three years older. But worse than any of it was that the callers couldn't even agree on what had happened to them. Some insisted it was a violent armed syndicate. Some argued it was more like a troupe of unnervingly well-trained frontier performers with serious mental-health concerns.

One person got quite heated insisting that if they weren't pirates, they were at minimum art criminals with terrible taste, because before taking any gold, they'd had the nerve to criticize the hall's angel fountain as "trying too hard, lacking confidence."

"They left a note by the champagne tower!" the General Affairs Officer was nearly in tears now.

"It says, 'The Black Cat Thieves thank you for supporting the Border Patrol Overwork Relief Fund'! What does that even mean?! What is that supposed to be?!"

"Evidence," the legal officer said, on reflex.

"I wasn't asking for a legal classification!"

"Apologies. Force of habit." The single most fatal line of the entire report came near the end. It was a young baron, voice full of genuine humiliation and genuine confusion, delivering a question to AU-1206 that had no clean answer.

"You have to catch them," he said. He paused.

"But when you do—could you ask who chose the entrance music for the main hall? Their taste is frighteningly good." The major finally broke. He took off his cap and pressed it over his face. He wasn't about to cry. He just needed the fabric to confirm he still existed in a universe where the laws of physics held and administrative procedure hadn't fully collapsed. The recording lieutenant stared at the log filling his terminal and sank into a different, more clerical kind of despair.

Because the official incident form in front of him only had a few fields. Nature of Incident. Suspect Description. Estimated Loss. Threat Level. And right now, he badly wanted to add one more. — Victim Satisfaction Rating, Regarding Suspects' Overall Performance.

"So, sir. How do we file this?" The legal officer asked, entirely sincere.

"List as piracy?"

"Half the victims are complimenting them."

"List as terrorism?"

"No political demands. Just fundraising language."

"Local armed faction?"

"Local factions don't usually correct a noblewoman's posture on the way out." The major said nothing. The whole duty room said nothing. The first Black Cat Thieves report had left everyone feeling like border duty was quietly rotting from the inside. This one—contradictory, emotionally fractured, half compliment and half complaint—pushed AU-1206 one level deeper into doubt. Maybe it wasn't the duty that had rotted. Maybe the world itself had simply gotten tired of pretending to be normal.

A few seconds later, the major put his cap back on, drew a long breath, and gave the order with what remained of an old soldier's dignity.

"Record as follows."

"Sir."

"Luxury liner Royal, attacked in this sector by an unidentified armed group."

"Sir."

"Suspects self-identified as the 'Black Cat Thieves.'""Sir."

"Offenses include armed coercion, property seizure, hijacking of shipwide broadcast, and—" He stopped. His throat worked once.

"—and unauthorized dramatic renovation of a high-society social function." The lieutenant's hand trembled slightly around the pen.

"Sir. That last line—write it exactly as stated?" The major looked at him, calm in a way that bordered on enlightenment.

"Exactly as stated."

"Sir."

"One more thing."

"Sir."

"Scramble three patrol craft."

"Sir."

"And bring me the classification report we filed on the Black Cat Thieves last time."

"Are you reclassifying them, sir?" The major looked out at the dark beyond the viewport—black as a joke that had gone on far too long—and answered, steady.

"No." He said it without turning around.

"I want to see exactly what gave us the confidence to think we understood these lunatics the first time."