Chương 486: 230.Propaganda Sample 1

When the shuttle's hatch opened, my first feeling wasn't we finally made it. It was loud. Not engines. Not alarms. Not gunfire. People. Through a haze of decompression mist that hadn't fully cleared, the white lighting of Spaceport Terminal Seven glared like a surgical lamp fitted with a fresh filter—too clean, clean enough to make you wonder if the place had been built specifically to sort the living from the dead.

Outside the hatch stood rows of ground crew, academy staff, port security, and something even more of an eyesore than all of them combined: a reception line that was too perfectly organized. Our side, by contrast, was quiet like a group of collective debtors. Three hundred second-years, dragging our lives back from a disaster in Lunar City that couldn't have gone worse, walking out with no applause, no chants, no one interested in playing the role of a miraculous-youth-survival ensemble.

Every one of us looked like a component fired in a kiln and thrown back to room temperature—intact on the outside, each of us privately aware of exactly where we'd cracked. Maki walked at the front. Her uniform was still crisp, her shoulders level, her steps steady, as if the deaths, the explosions, the blackout, the blockade, the border crossing, and the lies had all just been the most annoying line item on today's to-do list. But half a step behind her, I could still see it—that wasn't fine.

That was her refusing to let herself look not fine in a place like this. I understood. So I locked my own face down too. Jess, meanwhile, was probably the only person here with I slept forty minutes last night and I am still fully capable of running my mouth written across her face. She tugged at her uniform hem as she walked, muttering.

"Is the Federation spaceport AC set to corpse-preservation mode, or...?"

"Shut up," Maki said, without turning around.

"I'm just confirming I'm still alive, Captain."

"Say one more word and someone will come confirm it for you."

"... Copy." I almost laughed. Then swallowed it back down. Laughter was more dangerous than coughing in a place like this. Let it slip once, and your whole posture would collapse with it. I stepped onto the metal grating of the boarding bridge, looked up, and saw the Principal first. Honestly, the image was a little surreal. He stood at the very front in formal robes that had clearly been ironed at least twice today, his expression solemn enough to suggest he was about to lay flowers at a memorial.

Behind him trailed a line of faculty—academic affairs, discipline, department heads, and a few clearly-drafted student representatives. Every face was working very hard at the right emotion, so hard they all looked printed from the same expression template. Some had red eyes. Some had pressed lips. Some had I have a lot to say but I must stand up straight first written across the bridge of their nose.

And some wore the specific look I knew too well—the blank-faced determination of someone at a major ceremony, frantically reminding themselves not to lean. When the Principal saw us, his chest heaved visibly. For one second, I actually felt sorry for him. Because three hundred students who, in theory, should have been missing, unreachable, possibly declared dead, were walking off a shuttle in front of him, neatly—and not so neatly.

Whoever had to receive that sight would need at least three seconds of blank brain time first. Then he threw his arms open.... I take the sympathy back.

"You're back! Thank goodness you're back!" His voice bounced off the terminal walls with the exact energy of if this were the academy auditorium instead of a spaceport, we'd be starting the second verse of the school anthem any second now. I rolled my eyes internally. Principal. Please. If a banner dropped behind him right now reading WELCOME HOME, PRIDE OF THE FEDERATION, I would start checking myself for hypoxia-induced hallucinations. Still—he was the Principal, after all.

Theatrics aside, his eyes really were red. Not the kind lighting produces. The kind that comes from days without sleep, too much pressure, and the raw shock of watching something you'd already written off as lost force its way back into the world, undignified and real. That undignified quality was more human than any speech.

He hurried forward, clearly meaning to hug someone, but seeing our faces, he forced the impulse down into something more respectable—settling for clapping the shoulders of the students in front.

"You've been through so much... really, so much..." A girl broke down right there. Not loudly—just the kind of tears that fall the moment someone calls your name. The person beside her went red-eyed immediately. Something split down the middle of the atmosphere, and everything that had been braced upright sagged, a little, all at once. I stood watching the Principal go down the line—touching shoulders, nodding, calling names—feeling something complicated. Yes, I was moved.

Yes, I also genuinely wanted to make a comment. Because this scene looked exactly like everything snapping back into the safe order of school. But I knew it wasn't that simple. Sure enough, a second later, simple got trampled flat. The outer security ring opened, and the real noise flooded in. Camera flashes. Shouted questions. The self-satisfied hum of livestream feeds. The permanently overstaffed entourage that follows politicians everywhere—aides, security, clipboard-holders.

And the council members, identifiable from posture alone: I'm not here to receive anyone. I'm here to be seen. Looking at that sea of people, I briefly thought I hadn't come back to the Federation at all, but had wandered into some election-night victory party by mistake. Banners. Flags. Placards. Federation crests. Ribbons in every color, all claiming to mean unity, mostly just color-coding which faction you belonged to.

A few media drones hovered above the safety netting, filming Terminal Seven like it was a moment of national historic significance. These people really did have a talent for this. Three hundred of us had barely gotten our feet steady on the ground, and they'd already dressed the set like they were waiting for the next presidential candidacy announcement. Jess stood beside me, quiet for two seconds, then breathed out:"Wow."

"What?"

"I just learned that if you strip away enough shame, you can turn a spaceport into a campaign rally." I nodded. Accurate. Accurate enough that I was willing to forgive her for stealing half my energy bar in the transport's galley last night. The security and school staff up front clearly wanted to hold the line. They couldn't. Not a capability problem—a rank problem.

The council members, officials, and committee reps moved like scavengers who'd caught the scent of blood, each suit more immaculate than the last, each stride more eager, mouths full of concern and sympathy, eyes spelling out something else entirely— Political asset. That's what we were. Not everyone in that crowd thought it. But a large portion of them had already sorted the three hundred of us by use-case in their heads. Who looked good on camera. Whose crying would generate the most sympathy.

Who could pass for a hero. Who could prove the excellence of Federation education. Who could endorse whom. Who should say as little as possible. I wouldn't have been surprised if someone walked over right then holding a roster and a skin-tone calibration chart. Then the nauseating centerpiece himself arrived. Director-General of the Supreme Directorate of the Galactic Federation, Jefferson Sterling, stood at the center of the crowd, his suit cut with a precision that bordered on offensive.

This wasn't ordinary formal wear. It was armor, mathematically engineered for the role of trustworthy ruler—shoulders, cuffs, tie, cufflinks, the Directorate crest on his chest, every element landing exactly where it needed to for dignified, steady, beyond reproach. If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it. He was smiling. Not the fake kind. Worse. The kind of politician's smile practiced to the point of near-total invulnerability. Soft. Approachable.

Composed. Carrying just the right trace of fatigue. Even his eyes held precisely the correct measure of sorrow and compassion, as if he'd been the one grinding his teeth alongside us at the edge of the firing line these past months. I nearly discovered an entirely new layer of disgust on the spot. If he'd turned his back to the light right then and said, Children, the Federation has been waiting for you to come home, I'd have started checking my own visual cortex for damage.

"Everyone." When he spoke, his voice sounded like a professionally tuned pipe organ—low, full, carrying exactly enough resonance that even people who hated him would grudgingly admit: this man was born to stand in front of a camera.

"Today, the Galactic Federation isn't simply welcoming home a return voyage." My eyelid twitched. Here it comes. The tone that turns living people into rhetorical material.

"We are welcoming back three hundred young people who, in the face of chaos and terror, stood by one another, preserved their dignity, crossed through despair, and finally found their way home." There it was. A four-count. I kept score in my head, calmly. Stood by one another—check. Preserved their dignity—check. Crossed through despair—check. Found their way home—check. Next line would probably be some combination of two out of three: Federation spirit, model youth, institutional glory.

Right on cue:"Your very existence is proof of the courage of the Federation's younger generation, and of our community's unbreakable will in the face of crisis." There it was. Federation spirit. I finally understood why watching political broadcasts gave some people stomachaches. Not because he was wrong. Because he was so exactly right—every word individually frameable, and together still reeking of something processed no amount of elegant wrapping paper could cover. Maki stopped walking.

She didn't look at me, but I could feel every muscle in her body held inside a paper-thin layer of control. Not tension—readiness. Like a blade left a single millimeter out of its sheath, just enough to remind everyone she wasn't here to be a prop. Jefferson stepped down from the front row, approaching the student cluster with the open, practiced warmth of the most approachable national figurehead alive. Security parted. Cameras surged forward.

The council members and reporters around him brightened, sensing the day's most valuable shot. I saw his target. The Seitokai. Of course. Always the cleanest, most photogenic entry point. The survivor crowd at large was too messy—too many injuries, too many tears, too many people who couldn't stand straight. But the Seitokai was different. We could be drafted as the sample case for order and leadership. The first hand he reached for was Maki's.

"Kushima." Even the address was chosen beautifully. Not a rank. Not a title. Classmate. One clean stroke, and the distance collapsed—an elder, a nation, a system, all reaching out through that perfectly composed hand at exactly the right angle.

"You've done well. The Federation will remember your efforts, and the efforts of everyone here." If I threw up on his shoes right now, would that count as a new form of political expression? Maki looked up at him. She smiled too. But not the kind of smile that makes cameras auto-apply soft focus. Hers was thin, more like a politely packaged refusal.

"Thank you for your concern, Director-General." She didn't extend her hand right away. Just half a beat late. That half-beat was beautiful—like slicing an invisible cut across his cuff, right there in front of everyone. Jefferson's smile didn't flicker, not even once. His polish was infuriating.

"Everyone's safe return is the most welcome news the Federation has received today."

"The students' priority right now is medical evaluation and settling in," Maki said, steady.

"We'll cooperate fully with any formal procedures that follow." Translated into plain language: Don't touch. Don't film. Not now. I nearly applauded. Unfortunately, Jefferson wasn't the type to retreat after a single line. Keeping that smile perfectly calibrated to his approval ratings, he let his gaze slide toward me. Trouble. I immediately tried to adjust my expression toward just off medical monitoring, exhausted, unsuitable for political contact.

I was probably half a second too slow, because I saw his eyes light up. He probably thought I made for a good story. Great. I thought he made for a good punching bag.

"And this must be Hoshino." He extended his hand toward me. I looked at that hand, and a brief, vivid image flashed through my mind—a fist driving cleanly up under his jaw, full commitment, guaranteeing tomorrow's Federation headlines would be at least slightly more honest than today's. Right before my fingers could move, the back of Maki's hand brushed mine. Once. Barely any pressure. Light enough to be a reminder. Or a warning. I understood immediately. Not just don't do anything reckless.

This is not the moment to hand yourself over to be used. So I turned the hand I'd been about to raise into something that looked more like adjusting my cuff.

"Apologies," I said, in the flattest, least sincere tone of my life.

"I just came off medical monitoring. Not suited for standing long or close contact right now." Maki, without even turning her head, picked the thread up smoothly.

"Hoshino's condition is still unstable."

"Of course, of course." Jefferson nodded with the boundless tolerance of a national elder full of care for the young. I wanted to be sick. He knew we were dodging him. We knew he knew. And everyone still had to finish out this terrible little play of I care about you and you're cooperating so gracefully with my caring. Worse, the cameras were still rolling. Flash after flash. The lenses swarmed like mechanical insects that had caught the scent of meat. Jefferson didn't push against Maki.

He pivoted, smoothly enough to make my teeth itch, toward Roy and Lan instead. Roy visibly stiffened. Lan, the instant she looked up, had her flawless public-facing office smile locked into place. For the first time, I thought she and Maki were actually very similar—one built to handle comms, one built to handle the entire world. Jess had it worst.

She looked exactly like someone who, given five more seconds, would say something unforgivable—and she also happened to have precisely the resilient post-disaster survivor look the media loved most. The moment Jefferson closed in, her whole face entered the struggle zone of can I play dead right now.

"And this young lady—""She just threw up," Maki said, without changing her expression. The whole area went quiet for half a second. Jess whipped her head around to stare at her, eyes full of betrayal, as if to say: Captain, wasn't that blade a little fast? I nearly broke character completely. Jefferson's smile finally caught, for one microscopic beat. Fast enough that the press probably missed it. I saw it. I was certain Maki saw it too.

"... I see."

"For the sake of hygiene and the other students' condition, we'd recommend keeping some distance," Maki added, clean and complete. In that moment, I genuinely felt she wasn't just blocking him. She was conducting a lawful execution. Jess played along with remarkable professionalism, even raising a hand to cover her mouth.

"I—I might be about to—""Don't push yourself," Maki said, in the tone of a port safety announcement. I bowed my head, shoulders shaking. Not crying. Barely holding in a laugh. Jefferson's otherwise flawless shell had finally jammed, just once, for one small frame. But he was Jefferson Sterling—the kind of man who could step in mud and still hide the soles of his shoes behind the flag. He recovered quickly, retreated half a step, and took up the microphone instead.

"It's clear these young people truly need proper rest. The Federation will not leave them to bear the aftermath of this ordeal alone. I give you my word: the Supreme Directorate will coordinate with the academy, the military, and all relevant departments to provide the most comprehensive care, medical support, and resettlement—" There it was again. Framing every person as a fragile asset that needed to be carefully propped up by the system. Wrapping the reach for power in the language of care.

Calling a takeover protection. If it weren't for Maki's touch a moment ago, I might genuinely have stepped forward and added a more instructive example to Federation political history. I glanced sideways at her. She was still standing straight, her profile calm to the point of near-mechanical. But I knew her too well—the line of her brow was drawn a fraction straighter than usual. That meant she was angry. She didn't look at me. Just shifted a finger, very slightly, at her side. As if to say: hold.

I clicked my tongue internally. Fine. Hold. After all, compared to punching Jefferson, it mattered far more right now not to let this crowd pry a single extra scrap out of our mouths that they had no business knowing. Standing not far behind Jefferson, Vice Admiral Keisuke Hasumi hadn't said much the entire time. His face wore a standard, steady, perfectly polite smile—like a thin, polished blade left in its sheath. He didn't push forward the way the council members did.

He didn't shove a lens in our faces the way the reporters did. He just stood, watched, and occasionally exchanged a quiet word with the people beside him. This type of person was actually more troublesome than the other kind. Because Jefferson's ugliness was out in the open. Hasumi's kind left you with the instinctive sense that— Even though he hadn't asked a single extra question, he'd probably already filed away everyone's positioning, tone, silence, and every unnatural moment today. Still.

Filing it away was all he could do. At most, he'd sense that something was off. He couldn't know exactly how off. Thinking that, the fire in my chest settled, just a notch. Right. You don't know. You people with your razor-pressed suits, standing here, all you can do is stick labels on three hundred surviving students. You still don't know where we actually came back from. You don't know what's out there that should never end up in hands like yours. Framed that way, I felt strangely better.

At least there were still things you hadn't touched. By the time Jefferson's address finally wound down, I felt the exact fatigue of someone who'd just crawled out alive from an entirely different kind of fight. But what actually cut the air in the terminal clean through wasn't the school, the military, or the press dispersing. It was the second time the security line opened, and the people who came through from behind it. Family. No banners. No chants. No microphones.

No one had briefed them on where to stand, how to smile, how to arrange their feelings at an angle that photographed well. Just chaos. Someone ran too fast and got briefly stopped by staff. Someone started crying before they'd even spotted their kid. Someone, clearly an adult, crossed the caution line wearing a panic that looked almost childlike. Someone was shouting a name, gasping like their whole lungs were shaking. That chaos was more real than every tidy, dignified thing that had come before it.

A boy who'd been holding himself rigidly straight folded the instant his mother wrapped her arms around him—his knees just gave, like someone had pulled the bones out of him. Beside him, a girl's father patted her back twice, and she was already crying too hard to stand. A few others—the kind who never showed weakness at school—lost total control of their faces the moment they heard, you're back. Standing in the crowd, I suddenly didn't know where to look. Scenes like this are dangerous. Not because of enemies.

Because they look too much like an ending. And I knew this wasn't one. I didn't spot my own family right away. Maybe the crush was too much. Maybe the Kushimas had separate arrangements for the core members. Maybe fate was just being cruel, pushing that moment further back on the schedule. But even without that—just watching the embraces, the crying, the incoherent questions—something thudded, dully, against my chest anyway. Jess, beside me, had gone quiet.

She watched the chaos in the distance and, for once, didn't crack a joke. She just said, softly:"... This is enough." I didn't answer. Because that line was too direct. Direct like a blade—once it's in, there's nothing useful left to add. Maki stood a little ahead, angling herself sideways to clear a path, quietly dropping half of that cold, metallic line she'd held against Jefferson and the cameras. She still wasn't relaxed. But she'd given up her ground.

Given it to the people who actually had the right to stand in front of us. For a moment I had the urge to reach out and touch her—not clingy, just to confirm that the Kushima Maki holding this entire scene together, layer by layer, was still the Maki I knew, and not some perfect template the Federation had temporarily borrowed. In the end I didn't. Too many people. Too many cameras. Too many unpleasant people still lingering. So I just waited for her to glance back, and let our eyes meet.

She looked at me for one second. Short enough that no one would think anything of it. But I understood. Not over yet. Hold. I let out a silent breath. Fine. Hold. After all, from Lunar City to here, holding on was probably the one thing we weren't short of. The port's white light poured down over everyone's heads, washing the performance, the flashes, and the bureaucratic language into a thin layer of dust. The dust was still there. The disgust was still there.

But when the families really pushed through, shoving the suits and speeches and campaign smiles out of the way, I felt it clearly for the first time. We were back. Not back to safety. Not back to normal. Definitely not back to any world where sleep came easy. Just back to a place where at least someone would ignore the cameras, ignore the procedures, ignore the Federation's precious dignity, and just run up and hold you. For where we were right now, that already counted as luxury.