Chương 308: 130.Compromise 2

And for one deranged second, I actually missed the toxic planet from ten minutes ago. At least it only spewed poison. It didn't gossip with its eyes. Aida added one line, in the tone of someone critiquing the quality of produce.

"Of the walking wounded, two had no business standing and are standing anyway. I reserve the right to hunt you down for that later." She glanced at Jess first, then at me. Perfectly fair. Perfectly vicious. I was about to pretend I hadn't noticed when Ash's gaze landed on me. Direct. No curve to it. No softening for anyone's comfort.

"Acting Captain," he said.

"Second eruption — why did you abort the second window?" The bridge went still. Not suspicion. Everyone here already knew this wasn't procedure. This was verification: had that field call been judgment, or just luck? I pushed down whatever heat was still sitting in my chest and looked up at the main display.

"Because it wasn't a window. It was a trap." I said.

"Ten more seconds on Craft Two, and the collector and shielding go first. If the surface team forced the second crate, the withdrawal line gets severed by the resonance eruption. That's not one extra crate of material. That's one fewer full team." Harvey opened his mouth — probably to mourn the data that had almost been in his hands — and shut it again. Because data, however valuable, has never once looked as good on a report as a full headcount. Ash held on me for two seconds.

"The thirteen-north line?"

"Main withdrawal route was cut by the fog. Only the left hard-crust band still had a seven-second window." I pulled the wind-field replay up with one hand.

"Third landing point would've given, so standard pacing was out — had to use the second point for lift, cut west early. Narrow line. But it was alive, and the original wasn't." Ash didn't answer right away. He watched the replay — that thin line carved out between fog and open fissure like someone had done it with a knife. The others watched too. Maki stood a little behind the group, silent, eyes on that same seven seconds like she was walking it again with her own feet. A few seconds later, Ash nodded. Small.

From him, that was roughly the equivalent of a public commendation.

"Good call," he said. Then, after a pause, one more line.

"Same standard, next time you hit a situation this grade." When that landed, whatever had been locked tight in my chest finally eased. Not much. Just enough to still feel like a person. Jess, of course, chose exactly that moment to speak up, sounding suspiciously innocent.

"Didn't I say she'd look good in that chair?" The vein at my temple moved again. Harvey lifted his eyes off his slate with a look that said oh no, here we go. Aida finished rolling up her gloves with visible delight, the light in her eyes screaming finally, the second act, bright enough to open champagne over. Ash turned his head slowly toward Jess. The angle, and whatever was solidifying on his face, looked exactly like a storm cloud folding itself into a shape specifically built to hit someone.

"Oh?" he said.

"You have something to add?" Jess clearly had no working concept of restraint. Or she had one, and had decided against it for the day. Leaning on her crutch against the auxiliary console, mouth curving.

"I do," she said.

"Acting Captain performed beautifully. I just gave her a little on-site motivation." The air on the bridge congealed. Not a figure of speech. It actually seized. Akari's fingers stopped over the keys. Harvey wasn't even wearing glasses and still managed the exact face of a man whose lenses had just been knocked crooked. Roy's head dropped fast. Lan, with visible discipline, reeled her mouth back from a smile she wasn't fully winning against.

D, at the back, kept the same metal-plate face — but I'd bet money that for a tenth of a second, his eyes read: you two really do know how to pick the moment to die. And Maki. Maki didn't move. She just went quieter. The kind of quiet that's dangerous — because she was always quiet, but this was the sort where something gets pressed down a layer, and then another layer, until the surface goes perfectly flat and whatever's underneath sits heavier for it.

I looked at Jess and genuinely wanted to launch her clear out of the ship's orbit.

"Jess McCallow," I said, cold.

"Are you trying to find the ceiling on medical immunity today?"

"I'm just telling the truth."

"You should swallow that truth right now."

"But you just—""One more word—""Or what?" She raised an eyebrow, even leaned in a little, entirely unashamed.

"Acting Captain going to silence me on the spot?" If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. I actually stood up. Almost pure reflex. The chair scraped back with a metallic sound that had no business fitting the mood. Jess shifted her weight onto the crutch, and her grin didn't retreat — if anything, it sharpened. Not just a try me grin.

More like she knew exactly how much of me wanted to strangle her right then, and exactly how much of me wouldn't, and was standing on that line with complete confidence. And that was the moment Maki moved. Not rushing. Not raising her voice. One step. Just one. But it landed exactly where it needed to — right in the space between me and Jess, a line that had been loose a moment ago and was fast turning combustible. She didn't touch either of us. She just stood there, profile clean and cold.

"Enough," she said. Not loud. Everyone on the bridge heard it. Jess glanced at her. The amusement in her eyes didn't fade, but something else moved in behind it — testing, resistance, and the sense of someone who'd known this step was coming all along.

"I was just—""I know what you're doing," Maki said. Still flat. Flat like an undecorated blade. Standing there, I had a very clear, very bad feeling: leave these two to finish this on their own, and the bridge stopped being a bridge. It became an execution ground. That was when Ash spoke. No shouting. No hand on the console. One sentence, and the whole bridge's pressure got shoved back into place.

"Personal matters," he said, unhurried, every word landing like a nail driven into the deck.

"Settle them in your quarters, or take it to the sparring room." His gaze crossed me, then Jess, then Maki. Cold. Cold enough to remind everyone at once that this man could be sarcastic, could be cutting, could dress up concern as a combat-readiness report — but the moment he actually deployed real authority, the entire ship shut up on instinct.

"But right now," Ash's voice dropped a register, "all of you sit down." The air clenched like a hand closing around a throat. I stood frozen for half a second, then swallowed whatever had been about to come out of my mouth and sat back down. First one. Jess dropped the come on then look, stepped back on the crutch, and — with unusually good timing for once — settled into the auxiliary seat. Maki held her position one more second, then stepped aside, back to her spot near the data console.

Aida watched the whole thing. The corner of her mouth never quite made it back to flat. She didn't say a word. But her face said it, clear as print: Oh — now this is interesting. And not the idle, watching-a-good-mess kind of interesting, either.

It was the kind that belongs to a medical officer and an extremely well-positioned bystander — someone who'd already quietly mapped out how three separate threads were tangling together, how they were cutting into each other, and how they were going to pull more people in before long. Ulterior-motived. Thoroughly delighted. As for Ash — he wore the exact look of a man who knew he'd just forcibly pressed three nearly-detonated warheads back into their safety housings.

"Good," he said.

"Since everyone still remembers this is a bridge, let's get back to work." Nobody said a word. Not one person. Because at a moment like this, whoever opened their mouth first was probably going to get volunteered for the next round of toxic-fog field testing. Ash raised a hand and threw the extraction results, material losses, and revised route requirements back onto the main display.

"Yield's short, but it'll carry us to the next node. Equipment damage gets priority — Harvey—" Harvey snapped upright almost by reflex.

"Here."

"If your collector isn't back online by tomorrow, I'm welding you to it in the hangar."

"…Copy."

"Aida. Full medical checks tonight. That includes anyone who thinks being able to get out of bed means being fine." She didn't so much as blink.

"Of course. Especially anyone who got out of bed and immediately started adding to my workload." I decided not to hear that.

"D. Get the surface team's withdrawal route and the fungal resonance data written up properly. If we go back down there, I'm not relying on anyone's memory."

"Got it."

"Akari, finish the toxic-fog wind-field model. Lan, Roy — build me an overlay of the sodium ore distribution against the anomalous spore zones."

"Copy."

"Good." Ash worked down the list, item by item, dragging the rhythm back onto its proper track. One of the most infuriating things about this man was his ability to take a situation that was on the verge of going sideways and snap it back into place using methods that felt almost inhuman. But that was also exactly why the Yukikaze had somehow survived this long — running on half skill, half stubbornness, and the remaining half made up of people who couldn't stand each other but still had to keep living together.

I watched the extraction numbers on the main display, outwardly listening to Ash hand out assignments. In reality, the skin behind my ear was still burning. No need to guess whose fault that was. Worse, half the bridge probably had some rough idea of what had just happened here, and every single one of them had silently agreed to pretend they didn't. That kind of collective, deliberate ignorance was more exhausting than the toxic fog itself. The briefing wrapped on maintenance schedules and course corrections.

Once Ash had finished handing out assignments, his eyes swept over the three of us again — me, Jess, Maki — with the exact look of someone examining three mismatched components that had somehow managed to short-circuit each other on the same workbench.

"Before we adjourn," he said, tone flat enough to be frightening, "I'll say this once more." Oh no. A bad feeling hit me before the sentence even finished.

"Your personal business, you handle yourselves." Ash crossed his arms, eyes cold.

"I don't care whether you talk it out, argue it out, or actually take it to the sparring room and beat the hell out of each other. That's your business." He paused.

"But the next time anyone brings it onto an active bridge—" He didn't finish the sentence. The unfinished ones always do the most damage. Jess actually had the nerve to raise an eyebrow.

"Or what, Captain?" Ash looked at her.

"Or I will personally make that brig smell like a monastery." Half a second of silence on the bridge. Then somebody failed to hold it in. Unfortunately, that somebody was me. Because that line was exactly the kind of bastard thing Ash would say. The second I laughed, Harvey immediately dropped his head and coughed twice. Lan turned away. Roy just stared straight up at the ceiling, like the paneling had suddenly grown a star chart worth studying.

Even Aida, for once, didn't twist the knife any further — just nodded, satisfied, like she was quietly filing make the brig smell like a monastery into today's list of quotable lines. Ash looked at all of us, his expression souring another notch.

"Good," he said.

"Looks like everyone's still got the energy to laugh. Which means nobody's getting out of their duties tonight." With that, he turned and walked out. D fell in first. Akari gathered her slate and followed. Harvey drifted off toward the engine room, muttering about how cursed his life was. Lan and Roy made a sensible exit. At the hatch, Aida turned back once, and gave the three of us a look that read unmistakably: Take your time. I'm not in a hurry. I'll be watching this later. …

That woman really did have too much free time. Once the bridge had mostly cleared out, leaving only the main console's steady glow, the air finally became breathable again. I leaned back in the chair and closed my eyes.

"I would genuinely like to file a complaint with the government right now," I said. Beside me, Jess still had the energy to laugh.

"Complaining about what? Not enough therapists on staff, or inhumane religious conversion of the brig?"

"Complaining that everyone on this ship has something wrong with them." Maki, standing on the other side, stayed quiet for two seconds, then said, very flatly:"That's hard to argue with." I opened my eyes and looked at her. She looked back. Everything Ash had just pressed flat with a single sentence hadn't gone anywhere, of course. It had just sat down for the moment. Same as the rest of us. With most of the bridge cleared out, the whole space suddenly felt enormous. Not physically enormous.

The kind of enormous that happens when a room that had been packed with people standing, arguing, calling out data, throwing attitude — filling the air with noise by sheer volume — suddenly empties, and even the low hum of the main console becomes too audible, making it that much harder to keep pretending nothing had happened. I stayed in the acting captain's chair without moving. Jess sat at the auxiliary console, crutch propped by her hand, posture as punchable as ever.

Maki stood by the data terminal, hadn't left either, still holding the extraction log slate — as if, should anyone happen to pass by outside, this could still reasonably pass for a routine post-op debrief. Unfortunately, that was only how it looked. The real problem was only just beginning. I spoke first.

"All right." My voice came out flatter than I expected.

"Since the captain specifically called it out, let's deal with our so-called personal issues." Jess raised an eyebrow.

"That sounds very official."

"If I don't keep it official, I'm worried someone's going to get bludgeoned with a data slate in the next five minutes."

"Wow." She laughed softly.

"So I've been upgraded to official meeting-room projectile in your books?"

"Keep talking and you'll be upgraded to bridge equipment repair budget." Jess looked at me, mouth still curved, but she finally dropped the jokes. She knew I wasn't playing. Maki said nothing. She just stood there, deathly quiet.