Chương 232: 91. Nerd's Moment to Shine 1

Victor's way of teaching was strange. Not textbook-formal, and not Sergeant Takenaka's brand of memorize this or you die. Victor taught like a man taking apart a machine that already lived, fully assembled, inside his own head — showing you what was core, what was auxiliary, what you didn't need to panic about when it broke, and what you'd better already be on your knees praying you'd never have to touch.

He talked and sketched structural diagrams on the transparent projection board at the same time, pulling them up with a lazy flick of the hand.

"Three pieces to remember for the Yukikaze's main power system," Victor said.

"Heat source. Conversion. Output. Don't worry about the fine details. Learn the functions first. You're not engineering crew, and I'm not expecting any of you to strip a boiler by the end of today." He paused there to take another pull from his flask.

I was still mentally drafting a complaint about whatever this teaching method was supposed to be when, in the very next breath, he launched into a blunt, almost brutal, but somehow completely clear explanation of how the Next-Gen Controlled Thermonuclear Fusion Boiler converted an obscenely high-energy heat source into a stable, controllable ship-wide steam cycle.

"Think of it as a heart if you want. Boiler's the big organ. Heat-exchange loops are the blood vessels. Output stage moves the force where it needs to go. Not a precise metaphor. Good enough to keep a room full of non-engineers alive." Alive. At first, apart from Harvey, the rest of us were mostly stuck in a collective state of what language is he even speaking. Harvey was a different animal entirely.

From the moment the first diagram went up, his eyes had gone bright in a way that was almost alarming — like he'd finally been dropped onto ground he actually knew how to fight on. When Victor got to the heat-exchange loops, Harvey leaned forward without seeming to notice he was doing it, like missing a single word would cost him something. The rest of us — Honestly, I followed along for the first five minutes. By ten, some of the terminology had started sounding suspiciously like incantations.

By fifteen, all I had left was a quiet, genuine awe: apparently there really are people who can talk about an engine the way other people talk about the origin of the universe. Then Victor stopped. He glanced down at the roster. And smiled. Not mockery. Not the loose, self-amused grin of a man who'd had one too many and thought he was funny. The very specific smile of: Oh. A name I recognize. He looked up, straight down our row.

"Somebody from the Kushima family." I knew immediately who he meant. Maki Kushima lifted her head. Her expression didn't change, but I saw her shoulders lock, just barely, for half a second. Victor's mouth twisted.

"Your family's products. Very durable." The second that landed, half the room turned to look at her on reflex. So did I. Maki's face gave nothing away. But the alertness underneath it — the I already know the next sentence isn't going to be simple — was obvious if you knew where to look. Sure enough. Victor didn't wait.

"Maki Kushima. Tell me — the high-temperature superconducting magnets, and the magnetic confinement material used in the heat-exchange loop. What's it made of, basically?" Me: "..." What? What did he just say? Was that a spell? No — past a spell. That sounded like something out of a forbidden text that only unlocks once you've pledged your soul to the Engineering Division. Maki clearly hadn't expected to get hit with that particular angle either. For a second, she genuinely stalled.

Not the blank stare of someone with no idea where to even start. The specific stall of someone who knows the general territory, but the angle of the question is vicious enough that her brain was visibly running a high-speed search in real time. The room held its breath. Victor watched her, took another drink, and spoke without any real edge to it — almost lazy.

"Guess a name doesn't cover everything." He set the flask down and let his gaze drift off her.

"Anyone know it?" The words had barely left his mouth when Harvey's hand shot up. Fast. Pure reflex. Victor looked at him, and for the first time something like genuine interest showed in his eyes.

"Go ahead." Harvey didn't even pause to breathe.

"High-temperature superconducting tape. Yttrium barium copper oxide." The room went still for one second. This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version. Victor nodded.

"Good." Two syllables. But the instant they landed, I watched Harvey light up from the inside, like someone had thrown a switch. The Chief Engineer, for his part, finally looked like he'd found one organism in the room capable of a normal conversation. His eyes actually opened a fraction wider.

"Then," Victor said, locking onto him, "you can definitely tell me the stabilization mechanism behind the proton-deceleration topological field and the new-generation nuclear-melting agent." I gave up trying to follow right there. This wasn't a class anymore. This was a summoning ritual. Harvey, on the other hand, looked like he'd finally been handed the moment he'd been waiting for. He sat bolt upright, and when he spoke, there was a thread of real pride running under it.

"Yes, sir. The core is injected with an extraterrestrial Zero-Point Lattice Stabilizer. The substance actively absorbs the plasma's excess kinetic energy, converting what would normally be a violent fusion detonation into a mild state of Nuclear Melting." He delivered the whole thing in one breath. About eighty percent of the room — myself very much included — wore the exact same expression.... This is what's been sitting in your head this whole time?

Victor listened to all of it, and actually produced something close to a this one might be worth teaching smile.

"Textbook answer." He leaned back and looked Harvey over.

"Engineering track?" Harvey answered almost before the question finished.

"Sir! Yes, sir!" That yes came out so loud, so full of life, it didn't sound like an answer to a question anymore. It sounded like a confession of feeling, addressed directly to fate. Victor nodded.

"Good. Come find me sometime when you're free." The whole room went still. Even Harvey blinked, thrown. Victor took another drink. When he grinned this time, the pirate face somehow got more convincing, not less.

"I'll teach you a trick or two. Ha." Harvey looked about one second from generating his own light source. D watched him from the side, wearing the expression of a man witnessing someone get personally blessed by a god.

"That's it," D murmured.

"Harvey's ascended. Today's the day." And somewhere in the middle of all that, the entire room's read on Victor flipped completely. Walking in, everyone's reaction to the drunk Chief Engineer had been some version of has the Federation lost its mind. Now it had shifted into something more honest. Of course the Federation had lost its mind. But this drunk actually knew what he was talking about. And how much he knew was, frankly, a little terrifying. The tour came next. Victor didn't bother with preamble.

He just hauled us straight out of the briefing room and into the real maintenance sectors. First stop: the boiler room. The second the hatch opened, it felt like the Yukikaze's heartbeat had hit me square in the chest. Heavy. Thunderous. Continuous. The whole installation sat there like a beast chained inside a steel skeleton, pipe runs crossing in every direction, pressure gauges and flow valves catching the light in a cold, hard gleam.

The high-temperature shielding kept the worst of the heat sealed inside, but even standing at the perimeter, you could feel it rolling off in waves — nothing like ordinary heating. Something industrial. Something real. Victor jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

"Eyes up, kids." His voice came out even rougher in the engine room, and somehow that just made it fit better.

"This," he said, "is the Yukikaze's heart." He grinned, clearly pleased with the roar filling the space.

"Next-Gen Controlled Thermonuclear Fusion Boiler. Kushima Heavy Industries." Then, perfectly naturally, he twisted the knife.

"Though the Kushima kid doesn't seem to recognize it." I turned almost on reflex toward Maki. Sure enough, her shoulders twitched again. Small movement. Impossible to miss. I almost laughed. Not out of malice — just that specific, mean little delight of: oh, so you get called out by your own family's professionals too. Maki obviously felt me looking. She turned her head just enough to give me a sidelong glance. The meaning was perfectly clear. If you're going to laugh, just laugh.

I coughed into my fist and pretended I was hiding from the heat. Second stop: the FTL drive. Calling it an engine didn't really cut it. The whole room was the engine. Coils, ring structures, nested field modules, stabilization frames — everything spiraled around that vertical column of light at the center. The light was too bright to look real, bleaching the room into white, like someone had rammed a piece of domesticated starlight into the ship's metal gut.

I stood at the safety rail and stared at that column, and for a few seconds I actually forgot to make fun of anything. Victor stood off to the side, voice as offhand as ever.

"Yukikaze's FTL drive. With this, we jump superluminal." He paused, like he couldn't be bothered to recite the full official name again, and flicked his hand.

"Type-6 Space-Time Quantum Fluctuation Warp Engine. Kamikaze." He added, deadpan:"I just call it the light-speed engine. Less of a mouthful."... Of course. That's what professional ease looks like, I guess. Everyone else hears the full designation and wonders if they've wandered into a joint conference on theoretical physics and ritual magic; he hears it and thinks, too long. D was next to me, staring up at the light, voice gone small.

"I'm starting to think the reason the Yukikaze hasn't fallen apart yet is these monsters down here holding it together."

"You're only just catching up?" I said.

"I used to think what kept a ship running was the Captain and the weapons systems."

"And now?" D hesitated for two seconds.

"Now I think it's always the people who look least like normal humans who actually make it move." Hard to argue with that one. By the time we'd finished the tour of the two core sections and got dumped back in the briefing room, the mood was completely different from when we'd walked in. The earlier is this drunk pirate really qualified doubt had hardened into something quieter and a lot more obedient. Victor looked the same as ever. Sailor shirt, beard, booze, half-lidded eyes.

But now he didn't read as this man might collapse any minute. He read as: this is the kind of man who can drink through a lecture and still know ten times what any sober person in here does. Victor sat back down, set the flask aside, and looked us over.

"Now," he said slowly, "let's talk about the practical." The room snapped quiet. The high from watching Harvey get personally handpicked and praised by the Chief Engineer evaporated on the spot, and we were right back in the usual warship teaching rhythm: okay, whose turn is it to fuck up next. Victor lifted his hand and pulled up a more complex layered schematic on the board.

"Part one. Basic engine-room maintenance sim." He tapped a few points.

"No disassembling the main boiler. Don't touch the light-speed drive core. You're not sick of living yet, and I don't feel like doing paperwork." That got us all a little more honest. Good. At least this drunk had a professional baseline.

"What you're doing is basic work," Victor said.

"Quick checks on heat-exchange loops. Manual calibration on pressure valves. Backup cooling pump start/stop. Swapping out flow joints. Reading the damn maintenance panel errors properly." The way he said "basic" was exactly the same tone Tobita used for "simple lap" and Takenaka used for "let's go over defense first" — the kind of basic that only exists in the mouth of the person talking. D's hand shot up immediately.

"Chief — just need to clarify. When you say 'basic,' is that human-basic or engineering-monster-basic?" Victor looked at him, actually thought about it for a whole second.

"For you lot? Somewhere between a headache and wanting to die." Harvey, meanwhile, was glowing harder with every line — bright enough that I half-believed if you handed him a wrench right now, he'd go hug the main casing out of pure emotion. Victor glanced at the roster and started splitting us up.

"Pairs. Hands fast, brains can lag a little, just don't wedge yourselves into the pipework." He read names like he was assigning crate IDs.

"D and Roy. Harvey and Aida. Jess and Lan. Akari and Evelyn..." Then his eyes landed on our corner.

"Hoshino. Maki Kushima. You two." I automatically turned to Maki. She didn't react much. Just a flat "Mm," like she wasn't the same person who'd shared a room with me last night, walked into breakfast beside me this morning, and then sat there while the whole table tried their best not to combust.... Right. That brand of overkill steadiness is exactly the most irritating part of people like her. Across the way, Jess's eyebrow went up at the pairing. Her mouth followed a second later. Not a grin.

Just that slow little curve that says the script is already writing itself in her head. I decided, then and there, to pretend I hadn't seen it. Victor didn't care about the currents under the surface. He just finished the roll and waved us toward the simulator bays.