Chương 269: 110. Absolute Limit 3

I took a deep breath and immediately regretted it. The air on the bridge was not, at present, built for deep breathing. Scorched circuits, coolant, blood, and that dry, hard smell only large metal structures produce after being hit too hard — all of it mixed together, and pulling it into my lungs felt like swallowing a fistful of shrapnel scraped fresh off an accident site. I stood in the middle of it, surrounded by half-dead flickering light. Jess was still crying. Not the composed kind.

Not the kind that looks good in anyone's imagination. Full, uncontrolled crying — the kind where your mind gets ejected from the jump corridor first, and your body only catches up half a beat later. She was trying to curl herself smaller as she did it, like a rookie who'd just been struck by lightning and was somehow still being asked to file a combat report. I looked at her once. Didn't go over. Not lack of compassion.

Because if I walked over and put a hand on her shoulder right now, there was a solid chance I'd end up sitting on the floor crying right along with her thirty seconds later. This ship clearly didn't have the spare personnel to manage two emotionally wrecked officers at once. So I tore my eyes away and looked up at the control core.

"Computer. Full damage assessment." I'd meant to ask Aida. But one look at her and Lan — both wearing that identical soul still stuck somewhere in the jump corridor, retrieval pending expression — and I couldn't bring myself to do it.

I was genuinely afraid that if I said damage assessment, one of them would fold herself into the count and hand me a perfectly professional summary: this ship has lost one-third of its dignity, one-fifth of its vestibular function, and any hope of a decent night's sleep for the foreseeable future. The AI answered promptly, in that relentlessly level voice.

"Shipwide status: nominal. Minor breaches in several sealed compartments. No structural damage to the hull itself." I blinked.

"... You call this nominal?"

"Affirmative," the AI said, without a trace of shame.

"By Yukikaze standards, current conditions remain within acceptable parameters." For a moment I genuinely couldn't decide whether to be impressed by the Yukikaze's durability, or report the phrase acceptable parameters to the authorities.

"Engines?"

"Recommend consulting Engineering." I frowned.

"Kamikaze status?"

"Recommend consulting Engineering." I was quiet for two seconds.

"Main propulsion?"

"Recommend consulting Engineering." Perfect. Three questions. Three identical recommend consulting Engineering. Even the ship's AI had learned how to pass the buck. What kind of environment had we built aboard the Yukikaze that could raise a military-grade artificial intelligence into a seasoned veteran of not my department? I stared at the red text still pulsing across the main console for a while, then gave up and grabbed the internal line to Engineering.

The screen lit, and Victor's broad, bearded face filled it immediately — the presence of a wall that had recently had a drink, but was, for now, still standing. His eyebrow moved the second he saw me.

"... Why is it you?" Victor frowned.

"Where's Tobita?"

"Injured. Medbay." His expression didn't change much — just got slightly more displeased. People like that are convenient; the emotional range is narrow, easy to read. The downside is you never know if he's actually worried about the Captain or just annoyed at the inconvenience.

"Something you need?"

"Yes." I pushed past the dry catch in my throat.

"Engine status. And the Type-6." Victor answered fast.

"Kamikaze's dead. Not usable."

"... Repairable?"

"Sure." He said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"Get us to a yard." Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website. I nearly laughed. The comfort value of that sentence was roughly equivalent to a surgeon telling a patient bleeding on the roadside: don't worry, once we get you to a real hospital, we can operate. Thank you so much, Major Borodin. Truly inspiring. The only remaining question was whether we'd live long enough to see that yard.

"Top speed now?" I asked.

"Sub-light, at best," Victor said.

"Don't count on jumping again. Not any time soon." Good. Excellent. A warship that had just driven a knife hard into the Empire's back, then escaped on the strength of a three-button antique, had now lost the one capability that actually kept it alive — and topped out at sub-light. I began to wonder whether I'd recently offended some deity specifically in charge of navigational safety. Once the line dropped, I raised my eyes slowly to the main display. The red text was still flashing. CANNOT FIX POSITION.

UNKNOWN SPACE. I stared at those two lines for a long time. Long enough that the scattered crying, the groaning, the medical team's retreating footsteps, and the static of instruments trying to restart all seemed to pull back a layer, drifting further away. Unknown space. A remarkably compact little phrase. Its power lay in exactly this: not specific enough to let you take action, and just bad enough to let your brain start generating a hundred ways to die on its own. You don't know where you are.

Don't know how far from Parker-6. Don't know if the Imperial forces jumped with you. Don't know whether the quiet right now is safety, or the thirty-second blank right before something worse. I suddenly wanted to swear at someone. Not the Empire. Not Tobita. Not even the Type-6 engine that called itself Kamikaze and operated like a broken desk fan. I wanted to swear at myself.

Because I was the one standing here — on a ship that had no idea where it had ended up, in front of a main console still flashing red, half a bridge full of casualties around me, and the highest available command authority had somehow landed in my lap. Me? Hoshino Shimo? The same person who, a few hours ago, had been thinking about how killing Imperial ships apparently came with a KPI? If there's a god actually watching, His taste in comedy is offensively low. I looked down.

The captain's chair sat right in front of me. Empty. With Tobita carried out, the chair that had always looked like anyone who sat in it would automatically start speaking in orders now sat quietly in the center of the bridge, like a very bad omen dressed up as an invitation. I didn't move. Honestly, for one real moment, I genuinely didn't want to sit down. Not false modesty. Not some sudden cure for old middle-school delusions of grandeur.

Because I knew perfectly well that the second I sat down, some things would stop being just covering for a bit. That chair wasn't furniture. It was the shape of responsibility, given a physical form. Sit in it, and you're accepting that if this ship survives, it's on you. If it doesn't, that's on you too. And right now, honestly, I was terrified. Not abstractly. Concretely. Afraid my next order would be the wrong one. Afraid I'd miss a warning.

Afraid that what I thought was holding things together was actually just dragging the whole ship down with me. Afraid that when Maki woke up, the first thing she'd see would be the Yukikaze already halfway to becoming a training slide in a Federal accident-prevention lecture, courtesy of me. Thinking of Maki, I looked automatically toward where the medical team had just gone. The image of her lying there by the hatch, face covered in blood, was still stuck in front of my eyes.

That face was always so composed, so precise — she rationed even her frowns. And there she'd been, completely still, blood running from her temple, looking so unlike herself it made something in my chest twist. I hated that image. Hated it enough that I didn't dare examine it further — I shoved it into some drawer in my head marked do not open yet and moved on. Jess was still hiccuping behind me. I caught it at the edge of my vision and felt something genuinely absurd settle over me.

On this ship: one person crying like that. One unconscious. One run through and sent to medbay. One drunk in Engineering. One AI that had learned nothing except how to tell me to ask Engineering. The rest either half-broken or not yet fully back from wherever the jump had thrown them. And the one who ended up pushed toward the captain's chair was me. This wasn't fate playing a joke anymore. This was fate, thoroughly drunk, pulling names out of a hat. I stood there. Drew a long breath in. Let it out slowly.

I can't fall apart. Not yet. Wanting to throw up, wanting to swear, wanting to run, wanting to hand this chair to literally anyone who looked more like a regulation officer than I did — all of that could wait. Not now. If I came apart first, the Yukikaze really would be nothing but a metal box that hadn't quite finished dying. I put my hand on the armrest of the captain's chair. Cold.

The metal was cold in a way that didn't care at all that the last person to sit here had just been carried out, and didn't care whether the next person sitting down was remotely qualified for it. It just told you, honestly: a seat is a seat. Whether you sit or not, the ship won't wait. So I sat down. My heart hit hard in that instant. Not some hero's awakening. Not the kind of surge you'd use for an opening-credits voiceover — from this moment, I will protect them all.

More like the specific, physical terror of — Fuck. I actually sat down. The feeling of knowing perfectly well there's a cliff right there, and stepping off it anyway. I lifted my head and looked over the bridge. Jess was crying quieter now. Aida and Lan both looked terrible, but at least they were still upright. Roy had just pushed himself off the deck, wearing the expression of someone life had kicked three times in a row and clearly wasn't finished with yet.

Akari still wore that same unreadable look — impossible to tell whether she was about to fall asleep or had just finished an interview with the reaper. Everyone was looking at me. That felt terrible. Because I knew it wasn't belief. They were looking at me because right now, there was no one else left to look at. Which meant I couldn't afford to break. I swallowed whatever had gone dry in my throat and worked to make my voice sound like it belonged to someone who actually deserved this chair.

"Computer. Pull current position, available propulsion, weapons status, and life support." I paused, then added: "In a version a human can understand." The AI, blissfully indifferent to its own survival instincts as always, answered at once.

"Understood, Lieutenant Hoshino Shimo." I looked at the still-flickering UNKNOWN SPACE overlay on the display ahead, and felt my fingers tighten slowly around the armrests. The fear was still there. The doubt was still there. Maki hadn't woken up. Tobita's survival was anyone's guess. The Imperial forces might still be out there somewhere, sharpening their knives. Jess was still crying. And my actual compatibility with this chair was probably on par with a stray cat's compatibility with fine dining etiquette.

But there was no other option. Until Maki woke up. Until Ash dragged himself back onto his feet. Until this ship figured out exactly what corner of nowhere it had fallen into — I had to keep pretending I could hold. Because sometimes, a commanding officer is nothing more than the last person on the ship to fall apart. End of Season 1