Chương 484: 229.Situation Changes 1

The bridge of Asgard was quiet today in a way that felt wrong. Not the normal kind of quiet, where equipment hums, screens glow, and everyone tends to their own tasks. No. The air in here today felt more like the sealed-off scene of an accident — wiped clean on the surface, chairs and tables put back in place, even the duty roster posted up straight. But the moment you stepped inside, you knew it in your gut: Something had happened here not long ago. And it hadn't been anything small.

When I took my post as Executive Officer and Tactical Officer, my temple gave another faint throb. Half of it was the aftereffects of a hangover. The other half was the phantom pain of social death. Honestly, the human brain can be considerate sometimes. Take this morning's disaster — it didn't make me relive the whole thing on the spot while I was brushing my teeth. Instead it went with a sort of staggered delivery system, restocking the shame at set intervals like a bombardment, a few minutes at a time.

For example, the moment I stepped onto the bridge and saw Maki sitting in the captain's chair, her back perfectly straight, her profile cold enough to slice the morning light in two — the sound of that hangover soup shattering on the floor this morning surfaced in my head all on its own.

Or again: when my gaze accidentally slid toward the master seat and I saw that Hedwig had already recovered into that elegant bearing of hers — the one that could negotiate on the Empire's behalf and just as easily wreck someone's good name in passing — I remembered how, blind drunk and unable to tell north from south, I'd mistaken her for Maki and clung to her for dear life. And worse— Both of the parties involved were on the bridge right now.

One sat diagonally ahead of me, as if nothing at all had happened yesterday or this morning. The other sat higher up, her creamy-blonde hair combed so neatly it looked like she'd spent the night dreaming only peaceful, untroubled dreams. And me? All I could do was force my head down toward the tactical screen and pour every ounce of my will to survive into one goal: don't evaporate on this bridge today.

"Vice President," came Jess's voice from beside me, deliberately lowered but still unable to suppress the urge to do mischief, "you look like you just crawled out of some major turning point in your life alive." I didn't turn my head.

"Damage Control Officer," I said, eyes fixed on the tactical display, my tone so level it verged on reverence, "if you'd like to keep today's allocation of teeth, I suggest you put that mouth to actual use."

"Ooh, scary." She clicked her tongue, clearly delighted.

"That defensive stance just makes me want to dig even deeper."

"Be my guest."

"I'd love to," came Nikaido's voice drifting out from behind Jess, flat as if she were reading the daily onboard notice, "but I'll first block her, on grounds of discipline and shipboard stability, from blowing herself up like fireworks." I finally turned to look. Jess stood with her arms crossed against the side of her damage control station, wearing the smug expression of someone who was, in fact, the fireworks.

Nikaido stood perfectly straight, like a discipline-enforcement device in uniform, her gaze cold enough to freeze any rumor half to death before it left the mouth. I had to admit — chaos and order standing side by side made for a genuinely educational picture. One of them stoked the flames. The other put them out. And this morning, I just happened to be the combustible material the two of them had nearly used for a joint fire drill.

"Ladies," Maki's voice came from the captain's chair — not loud, not heavy, "if your morning social hour is over, put your attention back front and center. The Kushima family's escort ships have entered escort range." The bridge instantly went quiet by a notch. That was what made her formidable. Maki didn't need to raise her voice. All she had to do was flatten her tone until it glided along the tabletop like the edge of a blade, and everyone drew themselves in by instinct.

Not out of fear — because they knew that now really was the time for business. I dragged my gaze back to the main screen. On the tactical projection ahead of Asgard, two blue-white identification markers were cutting left and right into our forward zone. That wasn't ordinary escorting. Judging by their angle of approach, the positions they'd taken were carefully chosen — one claiming the forward vector, one locking down the flank-correction zone.

Not surveillance so blatant it was rude, and definitely not a simple welcome party. Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. On the surface there was always courtesy. Underneath, the hunger for control was wrapped cleaner than anyone else's.

"Identification complete," Akari reported in her usual flat voice.

"Two lead ships. IFF code set matches the Kushima Heavy Industries encrypted chain. Model correction... not a standard publicly disclosed escort-ship configuration. Armament configurations are masked. The exterior coating has been treated for low reflection as well."

"Translation," Jess drawled, picking up the thread, "it's the rich family's low-key version of a warship — so low-key it'd love to write 'I'm perfectly ordinary, please don't look at me' on the hull, and then casually hang eight guns off it."

"Ninety percent accurate," Akari said.

"Thanks. I do love a professional endorsement." I looked at the two escorts on the projection, my brow slowly furrowing. Their silhouettes were slender, their lines drawn in clean and tight — nothing like the Federation's standard escort ships, which wrote "I am armed" across every armor plate. Kushima stuff was always like this. Expensive. Beautiful. Quiet. And the quieter it was, the less anyone wanted to come near.

Because you never knew how many things meant to shut people up were hidden under those smooth shells. Lan raised a hand to press one side of her headset and flipped through several comms pages in quick succession.

"The lead ship is transmitting a guidance protocol," she said.

"It requests that Asgard enter Level Two silence. Non-essential active scanning off, long-range radar switched to passive reception. Heading, speed, and attitude corrections to be synchronized under their data-package guidance." Roy sat at the helm, staring at the freshly popped-up route chart, and let out a very soft whistle.

"This isn't docking us," he said.

"This is more like getting ready to stuff us somewhere that shouldn't exist."

"You finally say something human once in a while," I said.

"Thank you, Executive Officer. Your praise today is about as rare as a hangover cure."

"That wasn't praise."

"I know. That's what makes it precious." Maki took no part in this pointless back-and-forth. She just watched the main screen and tapped the arm of the captain's chair once with her fingertip.

"Accept the guidance protocol," she said.

"Lan, reply to the Kushima lead ships — Asgard is ready to shift into Level Two silence. Roy, hand over main-course control and retain manual-correction priority. Akari, confirm the surrounding observation blind spots. I want to know whether they're inviting us in, or whether they've already gouged out every eye in this whole patch of space."

"Copy," Lan and Akari answered almost in unison. Roy let out a breath and slid open a new control window on the helm interface with both hands.

"I knew it," he muttered.

"A rich family's secret factory is definitely not going to be a 'welcome, please go straight and turn left' kind of place."

"Why not?" Jess said.

"Were you expecting a sign at the entrance reading 'Kushima Heavy Industries Second Secret Factory Zone — visitors please register'?"

"Shut up. I need to face this view with the mindset of a decent person."

"Then you might want to swap out your heart first." I couldn't be bothered with them. Because my attention had already been swallowed by the route chart. This was not a route to any public port. The path the lead ships had sent slid first along the shadow of an utterly unremarkable asteroid belt, then abruptly cut into a narrow safe corridor that hugged the scatter-plane of asteroid fragments almost flush.

On the public star charts, that stretch should have been nothing but cold-zone debris marked as an abandoned mining area — at most a few derelict transport platforms and dead beacon buoys left behind. Nothing that could possibly swallow a hull the size of Asgard as a legitimate berthing facility. In other words, the route in front of us was itself lying.

"Something's off with the terrain echo," I said, eyes on the screen, zooming in on a section of the route with my fingers.

"The reflection here is too clean. Not natural occlusion — artificial camouflage. There should be large movable structures underneath. And more than one layer." Hedwig finally spoke.

"As expected of you." Her voice was not loud, carrying that calm which always left you unable to tell whether it was praise or something else entirely. I didn't look at her.

"If Your Highness knew all along, you could have just said so."

"I knew that place wasn't simple," she said mildly.

"But when it comes to Kushima property, it's more polite to let the Kushima family uncover it themselves."

"Coming from you, that always sounds like diplomatic language rolling out a red carpet for a secret," I said.

"You may take it as the consideration shown between mature adults."

"I'd rather take it as a shared bad habit of your upper class." Hedwig didn't argue. She only smiled, very faintly. She had recovered today with an infuriating thoroughness. The moment I recalled that a few hours ago this woman had still been in a white shift, arms around my waist, nearly getting me killed in my own room, I felt the universe's favoritism toward princesses had reached a level deserving of fresh legislation. And more infuriating still — that was exactly when Maki cast a light glance in my direction.

The glance didn't linger long. You could even call it professionally brief. And yet my shoulders snapped straight on the spot. There was no help for it. A guilty conscience doesn't stop existing just because you didn't actually do anything.

"Executive Officer," Maki said, "take your personal feelings off the tactical station."

"I don't have personal feelings."

"You do." She was hatefully calm.

"And they're loud." Jess buried her face in the back of her hand on the spot, shoulders shaking as if she were about to cough up blood. I really wanted to throw an empty data case at her. But everyone on this bridge today was better than I was at simply going on living as if nothing had happened, which left me looking like the only person present still being strangled by this morning's incident. It was unfair, and it was reality.

So I could only take a deep breath, stuff all the unnecessary associations back down inside me, and force my eyes front and center. And just then, Asgard cut into the first stretch of the lead route. The two Kushima escort ships held fore and flank, their posture steady to the point of coldness. They hadn't lit up more than necessary, keeping only a few minimal guide markers at their sterns and flanks.

The light of the distant stars, weakened by the debris belt and screening fields, fell slantwise from above, lighting the whole approach zone like a design blueprint not yet officially released to the public — every line carrying a touch of blur, a touch of gray that hid more than it showed.

"The lead ship requests another fifteen percent speed reduction," Lan said.

"Do it," Maki answered. Roy pressed down at the wrist, and the hull of Asgard — far too vast to belong in the second half of a school-trip accident — obediently slowed. Every time I saw this, I still felt a sense of absurdity close to laughter. We had originally just been three hundred students on a school trip. Three hundred.