Chương 97: 38.Solidarity 38-3

When the transport sealed its hatches, the world's sound got swallowed by a layer of steel. The port noise was gone. In its place: the ship's deep, continuous undertone, running through everything. Not loud, but relentless—like a massive, impatient metal creature breathing under your feet, reminding you that it was too late to change your mind. The cabin lights dimmed for a moment, then shifted to a cooler white. I looked up.

"Here we go," Harvey said.

"Thanks for the commentary. I thought they were just marinating us for a while first." I pressed my back into the seat and checked my chest straps one more time. Up front, two rows of first-years were already showing their nerves. One cadet had both hands locked on the armrest like it could countersign his will. Another had gone pale, lips pressed flat. Someone else was seated perfectly fine but couldn't stop scanning the bulkhead—looking for an exit that would let them say sorry, actually, I'm good.

I watched for two seconds and looked away. Being scared was normal. Performing it that visibly was a different problem. The intercom activated—a short tone, then a voice so mechanically even it sounded like the speaker had been formatted long ago.

"Attention, all first-year cadets. The transport is departing the port zone. Please confirm harness locks, equipment anchors, and personal comm unit status. Final mission briefing and drop pod assignment confirmation will begin twenty minutes after departure. I repeat—" I stopped tracking about halfway through. Because the ship had started moving. Not like ground vehicles easing forward. First a drop, then a lift, then the whole bay got pressed upward by something invisible from below.

The pressure hit my back first, slid into my stomach, and settled into my bones. Someone up front swore quietly. Jess tipped her head back, mouth still working.

"Not bad. Better suspension than my dorm bed."

"Your definition of better is genuinely depressing," I said.

"I grew up in the Lower House." She said it with complete dignity.

"Standards were always going to be relative." Maki didn't comment. She just kept her fingers on the edge of the folder in her lap, adjusting her breathing steadily with the ship's movement. She was reacting—she just didn't spend her reactions on her face. Annoying quality. Also useful. Harvey was more direct about it—never even glanced toward the window, just checked his anchor points one more time. The kind of person who, if he ever died, it would be because the world failed to meet spec. Not because he panicked.

The ship shuddered again. More noticeable this time. Some poor cadet up front made a dry-heave sound. Their squadmate passed a bag over with practiced efficiency—clearly not the first time. At least someone had found their team role before departure. I tilted my head and felt the rhythm of the pressure dropping and lifting, counting beats under my breath. Not my first military transport. The takeoff sensation wasn't going to rattle me.

Honestly, what I hated more than the fear was the feeling of being completely packaged into a process. Sit down, strap in, don't move, wait for the broadcast, wait for the drop. Like you weren't a person—you were a logistics unit with a name tag that still counted as a statistic. Very Federation. About ten minutes in, the vibration leveled out. The uncomfortable pressure in my ears faded. The intercom came back.

"Attention, all first-year cadets. Final mission briefing commencing now." The scattered conversations in the bay dropped away. The projection lit up on the forward wall, cold white text filling the frame with institutional confidence: Live-Deployment Field Survival Exercise / Final Briefing I wanted to roll my eyes just reading the title.

"One: timing begins upon drop pod touchdown. Total duration: twenty-one standard days."

"Two: squads will be deployed via drop pod into designated zones. Assembly, pod exit, survival, resupply, shelter use, and extraction are all assessed."

"Three: official underground rest station and shelter coordinates are displayed only on squad leader HUDs." My shoulders tensed slightly at that one. Knowing it in advance was one thing. Hearing the school read it out officially was another. It felt like someone placing the pot on your head personally and then politely notifying you it was there. The broadcast continued.

"Four: once an official shelter blast door is sealed, it cannot be reopened for seventy-two hours. Squads are responsible for determining optimal entry timing and personnel configuration."

"Five: in the event of critical injury, environmental lethal risk, or total squad survival capability failure, cadets may activate a distress beacon after consultation with the squad leader. Once activated, the beacon cannot be recalled. The entire squad is immediately disqualified and placed on the makeup exam list." That one pulled a collective breath from the bay. Not one or two people. A whole-room oh, so it really is that bad intake. I said nothing. I already knew this one.

What I was thinking about now was the gap between knowing and what it looks like when someone's actually lying in the mud, barely breathing. Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. The projection ended on a planetary zone map. The rainforest block was darkest, labeled with resource and shelter density. The desert and canyon zones were suspiciously clean—like the absence of things was itself the threat.

"Six: the rainforest zone offers relatively abundant resources, but also the highest concentration of high-threat ecological activity. Squads should weigh risk and benefit accordingly." I almost laughed. Weigh risk and benefit. Translation: we know the most survivable place is also where people die fastest, so we've engineered the situation to push everyone there anyway. Good luck with your choices. When the broadcast ended, the bay's energy had shifted. Not quiet exactly—something heavier.

Like everyone's brain had been dunked in cold water and wrung out. Nobody was pretending this was a school trip anymore. This was a scored, named, officially-observed elimination exercise in the wilderness. Jess spoke first, voice low.

"Good news: we've received written intimidation."

"Bad news: it came with an oral supplement," I said. Harvey looked at me.

"Run the procedure." I nodded and slapped the manual against my knee.

"Right. Procedure. Frost, first thirty minutes post-drop. Walk it now." Jess leaned forward on cue. Harvey took out his pen. Maki flipped her clipboard to a blank page. Four people on a military transport writing what might as well have been wills—just practical ones. I raised one finger.

"First phase: touchdown to pod exit. Three minutes." I looked at all three of them.

"The moment the pod lands, nobody plays hero and slams the door first. We check the pod—is it flipped, on fire, cracked, losing atmosphere. We listen to external sounds." Harvey nodded.

"Frost-03 takes pod damage and the door."

"Right." I continued.

"Frost-04 reads atmospheric data and baseline environment first." Maki picked it up immediately.

"Oxygen content, toxicity, humidity, external heat sources, visible biological activity markers."

"Frost-02—" I turned to Jess. She raised her hand immediately.

"Let me guess. Don't be the first to die."

"Close. You listen and watch—especially close-range movement outside the pod. People, animals, leaf movement, insect swarms. Report first." Jess nodded.

"So I'm the ears."

"Your mouth is always busy. Time for the other equipment to pull its weight." She made a gesture at me that was not appropriate for a military exercise. I ignored it.

"I confirm HUD, location, nearest shelter, and initial terrain assessment," I said.

"But I'm saying it now: even if the HUD hands me official shelter coordinates the second we land, we don't move immediately." Maki looked up at me, a faint correct in her eyes. Harvey supplied the reason without being asked.

"Shelters draw people. High risk. Running straight there after landing is like planting a flag in the center of a firing range."

"Exactly." I tapped the manual.

"Especially since the school is obviously funneling everyone into the rainforest—the single most common first-wave death is everyone rushing the same place that looks most survivable." Jess sighed.

"Federation education: teaching people to queue for their own deaths in the name of survival." I raised a second finger.

"Second phase: pod exit to first perimeter established. Three to ten minutes."

"Exit order?" Harvey asked.

"Frost-03 first," I said.

"You're tougher."

"That's not a reason," Jess said.

"It is, and it's practical," I said. Harvey didn't even twitch.

"Accepted."

"Frost-03 exits and checks ground stability and any subsidence. Frost-04 second—look for suspicious plants, overhead vines, anomalous scent sources. Frost-02 third, pull left flank five meters. I exit last, take overall assessment and direction." Maki tapped her clipboard.

"Overhead threat priority needs to go up. In the rainforest zone, strangler lava vines can't wait until you're stationary to check."

"So you exit second," I said, looking at her.

"You own the vertical and forward three-dimensional space." She nodded.

"Workable."

"Also," I added, "the moment we're out, everyone does a full call-number check. Don't call it stupid. I need to confirm all four can still talk." Jess immediately dropped her voice into mock-broadcast register.

"Frost-02, regrettably still alive, emotional status stable, over."

"If you're genuinely stable, I'll be worried you hit your head on landing," I said. She laughed—short, low—and didn't push it further. Third finger.

"Third phase: ten to twenty minutes. No objectives, no shelters, no glory. Three things only: water, cover, direction." Harvey looked at me.

"How do we assess water?"

"Can we treat it, not does it taste good," I said.

"Salt water we can process—that's a candidate. Suspiciously clean fresh water gets treated as a trap first. The kind of thing that looks helpful is exactly what carnivorous plants specialize in." Maki picked it up.

"Any isolated water source with abnormally low surrounding biological activity gets classified as camouflage until proven otherwise."

"Right," I said.

"For cover—priority is short-term concealment that isn't an official shelter. Depressions, root systems, rock faces, broken slopes. The goal is going from fresh drop, easy target to harder to find." Jess nodded.

"I like that framing. Very Lower House dignity."

"You have that?"

"Small amount. Rare. Protected status." I moved on.

"Fourth phase: twenty to thirty minutes. This is when we actually decide our first movement direction." I flipped to the terrain section.

"If we land on the rainforest edge, we don't push straight toward the densest activity. We cut along the boundary, find the first treatable water source and a low-visibility observation point. If we land inside the rainforest—""Then we pray the first thing we see isn't someone hanging from a vine," Jess said.

"Practical spiritual preparation. Thank you." I said.

"But yes—inside the rainforest, first priority is reduce heat signature, reduce noise, reduce presence. Needle-spine mosquitoes track heat. Shadow-blade wasps track vibration. I don't want anyone stepping too heavy on landing and becoming breakfast." Harvey added one more.

"Do we strip the pod for supplies?" Good question. I looked at him and thought for half a second.

"Depends on the pod condition," I said.

"If it's intact and the area's clear, strip everything we can. Water, anchor line, thermal insulation, hull tools—all of it. If the environment is wrong the moment we land—wrong sounds, wrong smell, wrong plant behavior—we leave it. Gear has value. We have more." Jess tilted her head at me.

"Was that you calling us valuable?"

"I was calling us not yet broken."

"Better. More you." Maki had been writing steadily. She paused here and looked up.

"One more."

"Which one?"

"If there are other squads near the landing site immediately after touchdown." The bay went quiet for half a beat. That one needed to be said. Not a question of if we encounter them. A question of how fast. I propped my arm on the seat back and looked at the cold white light on the forward bulkhead.

"Three scenarios," I said.

"First: they're in worse shape than us—more chaotic, more injured, louder. Avoid if possible. Don't pick up their problems. Second: roughly equivalent to us. Keep distance. If we can trade bad intelligence for their bad intelligence, we trade. Third—" Jess finished it smoothly.

"Third: they're standing on something we need to survive. Then we get ready to fight for it."

"Not fight," Harvey corrected, flat.

"Assess whether we can take it first." I looked at him.

"Could you at least perform having morals when you say things like that?"

"Better to perform it in the forest. Too early now," Harvey said. Maki didn't laugh. Just added, evenly:"And once an official shelter door seals for seventy-two hours, the dispute at the entrance won't be verbal." Dry. Also correct. I looked at her, and the note in my chest pocket surfaced in my head again. Within 12 hours of each use, the school dispatches resupply. If that was true, shelters weren't just shelters. They were refresh nodes. Ambush points. Observation posts.

Maybe even some kind of trigger for whatever else the school had out there. I pressed the thought down quietly and said nothing. Not distrust. Too early. Too dirty. Too much like something Aki would deliberately hand to one person and let them carry alone. Leave it for now. Bring it out when it's worth using. I brought the conversation to a close.

"Bottom line for the first thirty minutes. One sentence." Jess raised an eyebrow.

"Go ahead, Frost-01." I looked at all three of them, voice low.

"Be a team first. Find the score after." Nobody made it into a joke. Harvey gave a single nod. Maki wrote it at the top of her clipboard page. Jess leaned back and let out a long, slow breath.

"Huh," she said.

"That was almost cool. You're done for, Hoshino. You're starting to look like an actual squad leader." I rolled my eyes.

"Shut up, or I'm reclassifying you as Frost-02 Auxiliary."

"Auxiliary what?"

"Auxiliary bait." She laughed—low, not much energy behind it, but still breathing. The transport shuddered again, lighter than liftoff. A reminder: don't rush. The real trouble is still ahead. Somewhere in the bay, an instructor's voice rose—another squad apparently wearing their harness as decoration. I leaned back. The folded note in my inner pocket sat quietly against my chest, small and sharp-edged. Not going anywhere.