Chương 289: 121.Giving It Away 1

The instant that shot lit up, my first reaction wasn't who fired that. It was— Fuck, that's some obscenely unfair firepower. When the beam sliced across the display, it didn't look like an ordinary ship's gun. It looked more like the universe itself running out of patience and reaching for a glowing ruler to cut one of the Imperial patrol corvettes clean in half. That line of white-blue light was too clean, too precise — almost without feeling.

Like a foul-tempered but highly skilled surgeon who couldn't be bothered explaining the diagnosis to the tumor and just went ahead and cut. Then the severed half of the corvette bloomed into fire. Which made sense. Because unless I was badly mistaken, that wasn't a standard shipboard pulse cannon, and it definitely wasn't anything Lawrence Shipyard's black-market patchwork could have cobbled together. That was the positron beam turret. Isolde.

One of the Yukikaze's best-kept cards — the kind she only shows when she wants everyone in the room to start reconsidering their life choices. The back of my neck went numb.

"... Maki."

"I know." In the front seat, she pressed the Keiun down lower, flattening the whole airframe against the debris field's shadow like a sheet of thin ice, refusing to leak so much as a smear of excess heat. That shot hadn't just destroyed a corvette. It had shoved the entire situation out of three parties quietly tugging at each other in the dark and straight into nobody gets to keep pretending now. The comms panel lit the next second. Not a private line. Not cipher. The open channel. I swore, internally.

Sure enough, Ash's voice went off across the entire shared band like he'd pressed a loudhailer directly against every ship's eardrum in the sector.

"—This is the Yukikaze, No. 8 Kagerou-class Destroyer, Federal Fleet. Acting Captain, Ash Vander." I closed my eyes for a second. Perfect. It really was him. And not just him — the version of him that thought, well, since we've already fired the first shot, might as well make the whole scene bigger. Maki didn't say anything. I, on the other hand, was screaming internally. Don't use the open channel! Where were we, exactly? The fringe of a black market. A gray-zone lane. A pirate handoff in progress.

An Imperial patrol corvette that had just been—correction, you had just blown one of them out of the sky—and now you're announcing our name to the entire sector on an open line? That's not tactics. That's a masked robber walking into a bank and reading out his home address before he pulls the gun. But a second later, I understood. Because Ash wasn't reporting anything. He was stamping a seal on it. An open channel was never really about letting more people hear.

It was about letting more people, later, pretend they'd "always known." Once that line went out, that furtive little rendezvous between the Kushima merchant ship and Hook stopped being footage sitting quietly in our data slots. It became a question, thrown openly into public airspace by the acting captain of a Federal destroyer. You can deny it. You can play dead. But you can't say anymore that nobody knew. And his next line was, predictably, even more vicious.

"This may be a public transit lane—" his tone was almost gentle, gentle enough to be discussing insurance terms over tea, "—but colluding with pirates isn't exactly something you want spoken about too loudly, is it?" I nearly cracked my forehead on the auxiliary panel. You just said it loudly yourself! I had the distinct impression that if the captain of that Kushima-crested merchant ship still had blood pressure worth measuring, Ash had just driven it straight out through his ears. Maki finally spoke, flat.

"He's doing that on purpose."

"I know." I stared at the open-channel light.

"The problem is he's doing it in a way that makes me want to hit him."

"That's one of his talents." Coming from Maki, that line carried weight. She wasn't in the habit of listing anyone's virtues. If she was willing to phrase it that way, it meant Ash's particular trick — wrapping a threat in good manners — had become something close to a specialty. On the open channel, Ash didn't give the other side much room to breathe.

"Run along, then." Still mild, mild enough to sound like he was pointing someone toward the nearest emergency exit.

"Hand over the pirate." I stared at the feed. Only one thought remained in my head. Fuck. At this point I genuinely couldn't tell anymore who the actual pirates were. The situation ahead flipped immediately. The Imperial patrol, which had been trying to maintain some kind of we just happened to be on routine patrol and happened to notice a suspicious vessel posture, clearly had its composure knocked loose by that one shot plus that little speech. Losing a corvette already hurt.

Getting publicly named — on a shared channel — as colluding with pirates was the kind of mud that, even if it eventually washes off, still costs you time undressing first. And the Empire has one habit that's both irritating and, in moments like this, almost entertaining: they're more afraid of an ugly record than they are of a fight. Especially once someone else has already claimed the moral high ground on an open channel. One of the corvettes wheeled around immediately, clearly trying to re-form up.

Another gave the Kushima merchant ship a brief attitude check. The merchant ship, for its part, performed beautifully — like a well-bred lady at a party who's just been caught shaking hands with a known gambler, snapping her hand back and immediately reaching for a sanitizing wipe.

It flipped its external lights, running its ID signal brighter and more law-abiding than ever, the whole ship all but shouting: we are a legitimate civilian logistics vessel who has been tragically misunderstood — Imperial officers, please investigate accordingly. I nearly laughed. Not because it was funny. Because it was disgustingly funny. Maki clearly saw it too. She didn't say anything. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

But I saw her shoulder line — held so carefully level until now — tighten, just for an instant. I didn't reach for her again. Not because I didn't want to. Because this wasn't the moment. What happened under pressure back in the Keiun had already gone far enough off-script; touching her again risked my brain relapsing into the same crime a second time.

And worse — the second I let myself think about that kiss, heat still climbed up through my chest, and a beat later, like some kind of curse, Jess's damned little friend kiss would show up to land a follow-up hit. I have to wonder what kind of person manages to kiss Maki and then still has spare processing power left over to feel ashamed about thinking of Jess in the same breath. If I laid that particular internal wiring out on a table, I'm not sure Medical would even agree to look at it.

The open channel stayed quiet for a few seconds. Then the Empire made the single most Imperial choice available to it. It withdrew. Not a full retreat. Not a messy scramble. A very deliberate, face-saving pull-back — the kind that says we're not scared, we simply don't feel like escalating this today, the way someone who's just lost a hand at cards, fingers visibly shaking, still manages to say deal the next one out loud. For Hook, none of that dignity mattered. Because the Yukikaze was already here.

This was the first time, from this particular angle, that I watched her actually pull herself all the way out of the dark. Heat signature first. Then the outline. Then the whole ship, like some beast that had been lying flat beneath the ice, slowly lifting its head, dragging that modified-destroyer silhouette — somewhere between lean and outright savage — fully into frame. Her armor still carried the color mismatch of ongoing repair, hull plates still scarred with fresh Lawrence Shipyard welds. Not pretty.

Not even properly whole. But that was exactly why she read as real — this wasn't a ship that had survived this long on good maintenance. She'd survived by biting whatever got too close. And Isolde's main bus had just fired once, live. That kind of light was more than enough to make anyone with basic survival instincts start reconsidering whether tonight was really the night to push their luck. Hook clearly still had some instinct left.

In front of the Yukikaze, his armed raider stopped looking like a pirate ship at all. A minute earlier he'd still had the nerve to dump cargo and cut wild angles against the Imperial patrol. Now, with the Yukikaze bearing down on him head-on, his whole ship suddenly looked like a delinquent who'd just heard his name called by the homeroom teacher — mouth still trying to sound tough, knees already giving out.

"That's it for him," I said, low.

"For whom?" Maki asked.

"Hook."

"Not necessarily." Her eyes stayed on the feed.

"If he's smart about it, worst case today is he gets skinned. He doesn't have to die." Very Maki. Cold, practical, with that faint administrative aftertaste of whether you live depends on how well you follow procedure. The Yukikaze didn't waste a second. Once the open channel went quiet, she took over the conversation with action instead of words — bow correction, relative attitude lock, forced-docking protocol engaged, the whole sequence fast enough to suggest they'd rehearsed it on the way over.

A ship at Hook's level couldn't have survived this kind of close-quarters seizure even at full strength, let alone after getting mauled twice in the same hour. Calling what the Yukikaze did a "forced docking" was the polite version. The honest version was: You belong to us now. Hook's side didn't dare move again. Or — more likely — they'd just finished doing the math very quickly. He hadn't been able to beat the Imperial patrol.

Now the thing pressed against his hull was a ship that opened conversations with a positron beam turret. Fighting that wasn't piracy anymore. That was martyrdom. And nothing about Hook's face suggested he had that kind of ambition. The Keiun's signal light blinked twice. Not the open channel. Not the Yukikaze's main net either — a tight, close-range directional light-code. I flipped to the decoder screen on reflex, and recognized it instantly. Akari.

"Akari's signaling," I said.

"Content," Maki said. I decoded it fast.

"She wants us to return via the far side." I paused, kept reading.

"Once we're aboard, skip the bridge. Report straight to the forward docking section. Board Hook's ship with Ash and a fully armed security detail." I went quiet for a couple of seconds after that. Then the only thought left in my head was embarrassingly simple. We really were going to hit every single landmine available tonight, in one sitting. Maki wasn't remotely surprised.

"Makes sense."

"How does that make sense?"

"You think Ash was going to leave his first-hand witness sitting unused?"

"I'm starting to wish I'd been nearsighted tonight." She let out something close to a soft breath.

"Too late for that." Simple words. But maybe because tonight had already rewired my nerves three times over, I thought I heard, underneath it, something faintly indulgent. Dangerous. Because analyzing whether there was another layer under Maki's tone was exactly the kind of thing I had no business doing right now. Analysis like that rarely kills the enemy. It usually just kills whatever dignity I have left.

The Keiun broke cover and slid along the dark lane Akari had marked, curving around toward the Yukikaze's far side. The angle changed everything. Seen from here, Hook's ship looked even worse off than I'd imagined, pinned under the Yukikaze. The docking clamps and grapples between the two hulls looked like the jaws of some metal animal, locked hard into his battered plating. Next to that, Hook's raider genuinely resembled a fish just dragged onto the dock, still twitching out of habit.

The Yukikaze's close-in defense turrets weren't even fully trained on him. They didn't need to be. The posture alone — I'm not aiming at you yet, which doesn't mean I won't be in one second — was enough to make anyone who could still do basic math keep their mouth shut. Watching it, I suddenly felt that Ash's earlier line — hand over the pirate — hadn't been quite complete. Because what this actually looked like now was: If you don't, I'll just take him myself.

That man, in certain moods, really is only one uniform color away from being a pirate himself. Which made me mutter, under my breath:"I'm losing track of the actual difference between the Federal Navy and pirates these days." Maki answered without missing a beat.

"Report formatting." I almost laughed out loud. That line landed hard enough that I wondered if she'd said it on purpose, just to knock some of the tension loose in me. Normally, at a moment like this, all she'd give me is focus — not a swing at the institution itself.

"Fair," I said.

"Pirates don't have to file after-action reports."

"So do you want to put in for a transfer?"

"No. I'm worried the benefits are worse." We traded that thoroughly useless banter while the Keiun slid into the Yukikaze's shadow. Outside, half the battlefield disappeared behind the hull, and the comms noise thinned with it. Which, if anything, only made my own heartbeat easier to hear. Because the second things went quiet, my brain went straight back to what it shouldn't. The way Maki's mouth had felt against mine. The instant, overwhelming shame that followed.

The fact that she'd clearly noticed something was wrong with me and chosen to file it under you're exhausted instead of dragging it out into the open right there. By the time the Keiun locked into the recovery cradle, I was fairly sure a full third of my brain's bandwidth tonight had gone toward one single task: don't make eye contact with Maki. Pathetic. Also completely true.

Once the recovery clamps caught, the automatic guidance system took over part of the attitude control, easing some of the load off Maki's hands. But she still ran the whole sequence clean and precise, as if the last few hours — the kiss, the Imperial patrol, the family crest, the positron beam turret — had all just been routine duty. I have to admit, this woman's nerves aren't steel. Steel still expands and contracts with heat.

She's closer to some kind of low-temperature ceramic — looks perfectly fine on the surface, right up until the day it actually cracks. And when that happens, it won't be a small crack. The hatch hadn't even fully cycled open before the Yukikaze's familiar metallic smell came flooding in. Familiar enough to be comforting. Familiar enough that I knew nothing good was waiting on the other side of it.

The moment we stepped onto the recovery deck, the people waiting for us weren't Harvey, weren't Lan, weren't anyone who'd normally throw in a line of commentary before getting down to business. It was two security personnel already in full powered armor, visors sealed, radiating the specific energy of we are not here for conversation, we are here to teach people how to cooperate. One of them gave a short hand signal.

"Forward docking section. Acting captain's waiting." Maki and I traded a glance. Or, more accurately, I snuck a glance at her, and she chose not to call it out. We skipped the bridge, skipped the rest area, and went straight down the forward corridor toward the docking section.

Along the way, the Yukikaze's bulkheads still showed fresh weld scars, some of the piping left bare without a hint of shame, like someone who'd only just finished having a wound stitched shut and was already reaching for a knife on their way out the door. That's this ship, in one image. She never waits until she's fully healed to pick a fight. Her whole philosophy runs closer to: if I can still bite, then I bite first and worry about the rest later.

The atmosphere at the docking section felt more like the leading edge of a storm than anywhere else on the ship. Ash was standing right at the front. Not in dress uniform. Not performing any deliberate captain's-chair posture. Just a tactical jacket, a sidearm at his hip, a datapad in hand, and that particular mild expression of his — the kind that's mild enough to be genuinely unsettling. The fully armed security detail was arrayed behind him.

D was among them, gear immaculate, looking like she'd finally been handed a job that actually suited her temperament — namely, legally sanctioned permission to put people on the ground. Ash looked up when he saw us, glancing at me first, then at Maki.

"Good work," he said.

"Evidence secured?"

"Secured," Maki said. I added, "We've got attitude and contact footage on all three parties — the Imperials, the Kushima merchant, and Hook. Including the merchant ship's little display of cooperation." Ash nodded. The nod wasn't large, but I could tell he was pleased. One of his favorite things in the world is discovering that someone who thought they still had room to maneuver has already had their leverage neatly filed away in his folder.

"Good," he said.

"Then I'll need to trouble you both to come with me and have a word with Captain Hook." I looked at him, then at the row of fully armed, almost-too-disciplined-to-be-breathing-normally security team standing behind him. I couldn't help it.

"... You call that 'having a word'?" Ash answered without hesitation.

"I've always cared a great deal about the atmosphere of a conversation." I nearly rolled my eyes. Maki added, dry, from beside me:"He just prefers to remove every option except surrender before the conversation even starts." Ash actually looked faintly pleased with himself.

"XO. You really do get me."

"No," Maki said.

"I've just known you for too long." Standing between the two of them, I suddenly felt that the most dangerous thing in this universe wasn't a positron beam turret, wasn't an Imperial patrol, wasn't even a pirate raider. It was two extremely sharp, extremely articulate people standing on the same side. At the far end of the docking corridor, the hatch into Hook's ship was already cycling open.