Chương 493: 233.Meeting Again 2

I couldn't say exactly when it had started, but the entire school—no, the entire sector—had fallen into a kind of fervor that bordered on losing its collective mind. Not a celebration. Not a holiday. The kind of fervor that smelled of metal rust, where adults smiled brilliantly while hiding settlement spreadsheets behind their backs. The capital star—Dunan, our home system—was so far gone it made you reluctant to go outside.

I hadn't even reached the school gate that morning before getting hit in the face three times by full-size 3D ads along the commuter walkway. The first: Federation Youth—Future of the Sea of Stars, cut together with meticulously edited military-academy training footage. The second: Nine Stars, Shared Glory—Battling the Best, which at some point had inserted a national idol who was smiling and waving a training rifle she clearly had never actually held.

The third was the worst: Representative Team Assembly Countdown, built into a city-scale countdown board, the digits large enough to be legible from the neighboring sector. The transit system wasn't any better. Every surface inside the car had been conscripted for advertising. Slogans on the ceiling: This Time, We Will Not Yield. Door-panel posters: stylized silhouettes of each representative academy's star cadets. Even the weather app I usually checked during my commute had been hijacked.

Before it loaded forecasts, it now insisted on a burst of orchestral music and a flawlessly edited Operation Nine Stars promo clip. The ad ended with a line in small text: This message is brought to you by the Federation Propaganda Bureau in cooperation with the Dunan System Media Association. Please support our representative team. I sneered, silently. Translated into plain language: We've decided what you're going to be hyped about. Please be moved according to the script. How thoughtful.

If I hadn't personally walked through the live-action version of Lunar City, maybe the sound and light would have done something to me. Unfortunately, I had. So I spent the whole commute holding myself back from rolling my eyes at every screen. And just when the capital star seemed on the verge of drowning itself entirely in this officially sanctioned fervor, a few days later—only a handful of days before Operation Nine Stars opened—Colonel Leo Wiesland finally remembered that I, Hoshino Shimo, existed.

He called in person. On my private line, not through the academy's internal mail.

"Heard you've been busy lately?" Same as always: his voice carried that nice weather today, let's mess with you a bit casualness.

"I brought you a little present." I stared at his face on the screen, a face that didn't match gift-bearing elder statesman in any known language.

"Drop by when you can. The sooner the better." If I hadn't known him as long as I had, I'd have written this off as some upgraded border-space scam. No normal Senpai officer calls a sixteen-year-old girl before Operation Nine Stars and says, I've got a little present for you. Coming out of his mouth, it translated directly to: Time to return that encrypted card. Also, I have a few more things for you to carry. I knew perfectly well what he wanted. The Asgard's data. I didn't hurry.

Straightened my uniform, left, changed routes twice, and made it to the doors of Joint Operations Command by noon. The sentries at the entrance had an interesting reaction to my ID. No surprise, no suspicion. Just that peculiar professional flatness you see when someone's been briefed from above. They didn't bother with many questions, just scanned me through and let me into a floor no normal student should ever see. I marked it down mentally.

The hallway I was walking down right now was one most cadets would never set foot on in their entire lives. I wasn't even fifteen yet, and the paint on these walls was starting to look familiar. Hard to say whether that counted as promising or pathological. At Colonel Wiesland's office door, I knocked twice.

"Come in," he called, sounding—as usual—like rank and formal speech had never quite made it into his personal dictionary. I stepped in— And stopped. It wasn't just Colonel Wiesland. Sitting on his sofa was a man I had absolutely no desire to see. Deputy Chief of Joint Operations Command, Vice Admiral Keisuke Hasumi. Of course I recognized him. Hard not to. Just recently he'd been in the spaceport's special reception lounge, turning this is not an interrogation into an art form.

Now he was here, sitting on Wiesland's sofa, one leg crossed, posture relaxed like a neighbor dropping by for afternoon tea. He looked up when I entered, and smiled. That smile, I knew. The same one from the reception room. Polished by time and power until flawless. Crafted specifically to get young people to let their guard down so they could be neatly taken apart. This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

"Ah. Hoshino," he said.

"Hoshino," Wiesland said from behind his desk, sounding as welcoming as if I'd been a favorite niece.

"Salute the Vice Admiral."

"Yes, sir." I came to attention and gave Hasumi a perfectly standard, perfectly polite, nearly glacial salute.

"No need to be so formal," he said, waving a hand. His no need to be formal was so friendly it made every hair on my arms want to salute.

"Hoshino is a very capable young woman," he went on.

"You've been through a lot. Last time, because of the setting, there were many things we didn't get to talk through properly."

"I'm honored, sir," I said, doing my best to sound like a feelings-disabled response unit. Hasumi didn't seem to mind. He even smiled a little more, leaning forward a touch.

"In fact, last time, we weren't entirely clear with you from the Joint Command side." Every alarm bell in my head went off. From someone like him, we weren't entirely clear with you rarely meant we're going to properly explain things now. It usually meant I'm about to tell you something that will quietly attach another invisible string to you from today onward.

"Colonel Wiesland, Dr. Steiner, and myself are all part of this program," he said. The room went very quiet. My face didn't change. My feet stayed where they were. Even my breathing stayed in its lane. But I knew very clearly: he'd just nudged my status up one level. A minute ago, I was just a student summoned to return an encrypted card. Now, I'd been deliberately recast by the Deputy Chief of Joint Operations Command as someone who knew too much. And he'd chosen to say it himself. No—that wasn't quite right.

He'd chosen to let me know.

"Sir…" Colonel Wiesland's face took on a look of obvious discomfort. That discomfort was very theatrically done. Anyone who actually knew him knew that when this man was really bothered, it never showed on his face. If it was on his face, it meant he'd already done the math and accepted the result.

"That isn't authorized for release yet…" Hasumi immediately put on an oh dear, I misspoke expression. He was too good at it. Good enough that it confirmed the obvious—he hadn't misspoken. He'd wanted me to hear it, then have Wiesland close the scene up for him. Tag-team, rehearsed at least eight hundred times. Old tricks for old officers.

"My mistake," Hasumi said lightly, standing.

"Hoshino, my apologies. Consider that last line nothing more than an old man at Joint Ops forgetting himself."

"Yes, sir," I said, giving him a textbook salute. No, sir. There wasn't a syllable of that I was planning to let go. He and Wiesland traded a few lines of harmless stuff—she's a promising one, I have another meeting, won't intrude—and then he walked out, as impeccable as ever. The door shut behind him. I stared at it and took a deep breath.

"He's insufferable," Colonel Wiesland said frankly.

"Colonel." I slipped a hand into my pocket, pulled out the encrypted card Hedwig had left with me. He looked up, watching my hand.

"Here." I let the card land on his desk with a loud, clean clack, about as politely as if I'd picked it up off the street.

"What you wanted." I wasn't in the mood for small talk. He stared at the card for a second, then lifted his eyes.

"Hoshino." The corner of his mouth curved into something that didn't look much like a superior officer at all.

"Aren't you curious?"

"Curious?" I didn't hesitate for even a second.

"But you wouldn't tell me anyway." I looked at him.

"You people only start talking after someone dies." Colonel Wiesland blinked. Then barked a laugh.

"Ha." Genuine, from the chest.

"That's exactly what I like about you."

"Sir."

"Mm?"

"You said that last time."

"And I remember it every time I see you." I didn't bother answering. He pocketed the card, casual as if it were a pack of gum from the convenience store, not a data core for a capital ship.

"Still," he said—tone tightening by half a notch.

"Hoshino."

"Sir."

"Too much curiosity will cut your life short." He said it very lightly. I heard it very clearly. It wasn't a threat. It wasn't concern. It was a simple, calm statement: what happens in this office—and how long you live—depends on your own sense of where to stop. My face didn't move.

"I understand," I said.

"Which is why, from the moment Vice Admiral Hasumi started talking, I haven't heard a thing." Wiesland chuckled.

"Good girl." It wasn't warm. It wasn't cold either. Purely, cleanly him—serious and offhand at the same time. I turned for the door. At the threshold, something occurred to me. I stopped.

"Oh. Right."

"Hm?"

"That data—" I looked back at him.

"Kushima has a copy too." The office went still again. Just for a second. The smile on his face didn't change, but I saw the temperature in his eyes drop, perceptibly, half a degree.

"Got it," he said.

"Before you go—" he pointed at the connecting door.

"Drop in on Dr. Steiner." I paused. A very familiar, very unpleasant premonition slid up from my gut. Shit. He wasn't going to have me test some new unknown compound again, was he? In my head, the cursing went on for a full, detailed paragraph. Out loud, I kept my voice perfectly neat.

"... Yes, sir." And walked out. Standing at the door of Dr. Heinrich von Steiner's lab, I seriously considered turning around and leaving. Not an exaggeration. Anyone who has ever been warmly invited to do a small experiment by this man would understand that instinct. When he calls something small, it's usually already beyond anything you can reasonably quantify.

Then I remembered: if he got it into his head that I was avoiding him, he'd end up calling out to me tomorrow in the least convenient possible location on campus, in that Federation Standard of his carrying the unmistakable inflection of an Imperial-educated speaker, and say: Hoshino, why didn't you come in yesterday? I prepared all day for that experiment. The thought of that was worse than the experiment. I sighed. Fine. I pushed the door open.

"Ah, Hoshino. Perfect timing." Dr. Heinrich von Steiner looked the same as ever—lab coat, hair a mess, smile too bright for someone whose favorite opening line was try this. His Federation Standard, colored with the crisp inflection of an Imperial-educated speaker, flowed smooth and easy. Hear enough of it and you started to feel like he was less an Imperial scientist posted to a Federation facility and more an imported variety show act.

"Doctor." I opened my mouth first.

"Let me say this up front."

"Mm?" He cocked his head.

"We start Operation Nine Stars next week."

"I know, I know."

"If any of your weird drugs interfere with—""Ah, come and look at this first." He hadn't heard a word. I shut my mouth. Right. One more piece of proof: his ears are selectively functional. Anything related to his experimental interests, he hears clearly. Anything that sounds like limiting those interests goes straight to nowhere. He caught my sleeve and steered me across the room. I thought he was going to show me some compact device. He stopped in front of a storage pod. A large one.

Large enough that, the instant he reached for the latch, a very sincere thought flashed across my head: He is not about to put me in there, is he? It wasn't impossible. Really wasn't. I'd already started imagining my death notice—Cadet Hoshino Shimo went missing after being submerged in the laboratory under unexplained circumstances; the Academy will handle the matter in accordance with regulations—wrapped in that same cold, infuriatingly calm public language. Fortunately, he didn't dunk me. He just opened the pod.

White mist rolled out with a hiss. And then I saw it. A powered armor suit. Lying inside. Not the heavy, clunky training models. Not the standardized, stripped-down mass-production versions the fleet used. The lines were cleaner. The joints were tighter. The main plates were a pale, cold, quiet silver, catching the pod light in a way that looked almost fluid. I stared at it for several seconds before managing a sentence.

"... Prototype?"

"Finally interested?" Dr. Steiner grinned. He sounded genuinely delighted. Like an uncle proudly presenting the latest toy to a kid. The toy being a suit of powered armor built to kill. I watched that silver surface, and for a moment I felt all the agitation, anger, and sense of being used that had built up in Colonel Wiesland's office get pressed down by this thing. Not soothed. Covered. The suit lay quietly in its pod, but it felt like a reminder.

The world isn't going to demand less of your life just because you complain. But if you intend to walk into the path they've drawn for you, they'll at least hand you something half-decent to do it with. I took a slow breath.

"Doctor," I said.

"Ah, finally going to ask a question?" he said.

"This thing—" I hesitated.

"—is it for me?" Dr. Steiner's grin widened.

"What do you think?" I kept staring at the prototype. I didn't answer. Because I already knew. And because saying it out loud would only make the rest of today harder to get through. Outside, Dunan's sunlight slipped past the blinds, catching on the edge of that silver plate and glinting in a way that was just a little unsettling. Operation Nine Stars hadn't started yet.

And somehow, I was already being quietly outfitted for the next phase—by the Federation, by the Kushimas, and by this doctor with his Imperial-educated Federation Standard.