Chương 14: 08.Bad News in Uniform 08-1

In the 3D recruitment feeds at the enlistment office, the Federation's capital world Dunan is called the last lighthouse of human civilization. In those feeds, it always looks too perfect to be real. Twelve Skyshield orbital fortresses hang in low orbit like a ring of silver-blue halos, wrapping the entire planet clean and pristine. The surface bristles with pure white nano-skyscrapers, their exteriors reflecting starlight—white as sanctity, white as nobility, white like no one has ever bled here.

But standing here now on the metal walkway of the transit port, all I can think is that this place looks like an arrogant white tumor that learned to hold its chin up. The moment the shuttle hatch opens, the smell hits first—disinfectant, cold metal, and engine vapor mixing together and slamming straight into my sinuses. I grab my bag and walk down the ramp, boots hitting the military dock deck, and my ears immediately flood with sound: Check-in announcements. The hydraulic groan of cargo cranes.

The sharp crack of MP boots on deck plating. And in the distance, engines running warm-up cycles—a low, throttled rumble like something large breathing through a crushed throat. I look up at Dunan's endless skyline, and my stomach does a slow flip. Dunan's skyline isn't built for people. It's built for power.

The Supreme Council, the Ministry of Defense, the Joint Operations Command—three massive white towers stabbed into the sky like dinner knives, their exteriors uniformly coated in reflective nano-paint, so clean you'd think this country has never needed anyone to wipe up its blood.

The generals and politicians up there are probably sitting in rooftop restaurants right now, drinking real wine shipped in from agricultural worlds, sealed inside climate-controlled, sterile, perfectly soundproofed private rooms, drawing red lines across virtual sand tables. One line drawn: a company gone. Another line: a battalion. Push it out a little further: fresh meat for some Imperial front line meat grinder dozens of light-years away. And we're the meat they throw in.

The oversized screens on the port's outer barriers loop political slogans. ONLY THROUGH SERVICE DOES ONE BECOME A CITIZEN. The font is large enough to suggest they're not entirely confident the brainwashing took. I stand there for two seconds and reconfirm exactly one thing. There are basically two ways to live in this world. Either you exploit other people. Or you get exploited until there's nothing left but the smell. Dunan's greatest achievement isn't its technology or its twelve Skyshield fortresses.

It's how it can take feeding people into the front lines and package it as something refined, noble—something you're supposed to be moved to tears about. A patriotic act. On the street projection screens, it's always virtual idols in crisp uniforms, smiling like insurance ads, telling everyone who walks past: Fight for the Federation. Fight for civilization. Fight for the future. Bullshit. People who've actually crawled out of a pile of corpses don't talk with that expression.

Only people like us—the ones who didn't quite die and still happen to be breathing—end up in basement bars in Dunan's lower districts, holding glasses of fake whiskey cut with industrial alcohol, looking up at that ring of silver-blue halos, and laughing somewhere cold inside. This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. You people living in the light have no idea the rest of the universe has been soaking in blood for years.

I stare at those three towers until I feel a nerve in my skull threatening to snap from the glare off the white walls. So I drop my bag, sit on the alloy bench at the edge of the port—cold as a morgue slab—and begin my personal psychological rehabilitation routine. In practical terms: mentally dicing up the entire planet of Dunan along with every bastard living on it. Three times over. Start with the Ministry of Defense. Then the Supreme Council.

Save the Joint Operations Command for last, since I still have to report there today. Better to get one good mental stabbing in first—courtesy. Five minutes later, I feel much better. Mental health really is the most important thing in life. I look up and reconfirm today's destination. The building on the left is the Ministry of Defense. Large, white, an unconscionable waste of taxpayer money. The only useful part is probably the Fleet Command buried somewhere inside.

The middle one is the Federation Central Supreme Council. Not much to say about that. Just parasites in suits that cost more than coffins, sitting in the most heated room in the building, deciding how other people are going to die. And the one on the right— That's where I'm going today. The Joint Operations Command. Some people call it Military Command. Others call it Intelligence. To me, it looks more like an extremely large, fully licensed meat-processing management system. What an honor.

Starting today, I'm going to be its newest consumable. After finishing check-in, I thought that was basically it. Turns out I was still too young. Not just biologically, but in the sense of still harboring some faint, irrational hope about Federation bureaucracy. The moment the check-in counter light flips from red to green, the guidance screen beside it flashes the next line: Please proceed to Security Zone A for personnel clearance. I stare at that text for two seconds. … Right.

So I'm not here to report for duty. I'm here to clear a dungeon. Pass one stage, move to the next. Maybe fight a boss before anyone hands me a room key. Two MPs stand at the entrance to Security Zone A, white armor polished so bright I genuinely wonder if they wax themselves before every shift. When I hand over my supply voucher and transfer orders, one of them looks up at me. Then looks again. I roll my eyes internally. Rude.

I know I'm objectively easy to look at—silver hair, narrow shoulders, the kind of face that shows up in Federation recruitment posters for roles that have no business near a front line. But there's no need to stare. What, never seen a live underage piece of cannon fodder? His gaze holds on my face for half a second, drops to my documents, then he hands everything back with a flat expression.

"Clear. Proceed to Zone B for secondary screening." … Huh? I almost think I misheard. It's only when I enter Zone B that I realize Zone A was the appetizer. The real paranoia lives here. This isn't a standard full-body scan. The entrance is flanked by three staggered sensor gates; overhead, a military-grade skeletal imager; even the floor glows. The second I step onto it, the white panel beneath my boots lights up in pulsing blue rings, scanning upward from my ankles—like a medical exam that ran out of dignity.

I look down. My mood goes flat. This isn't security anymore. This is the Federation checking whether I've hidden a cruiser in my trouser leg. The processing officer sits behind blast-resistant glass, her voice carrying the ambient temperature of a walk-in freezer.

"Documents." I pass over my supply voucher, transfer orders, and temporary access code. She checks my face, then my irises, then the data chip, then has me press my right hand to a scanner for biometric verification. I can't help asking, "Is it always this strict?" She doesn't look up, fingers moving across her light screen.

"Last month a veteran attempted to stab a planning officer in the operations room. Zone B protocols were upgraded after that." I blink. … Attempted. What a shame. I mean—if you made it all the way to an operations room door and still didn't finish the job, that's a significant gap between ambition and execution. I spend half a second in silent tribute to that veteran, then extend my sincere respect to the Federation's security budget. So it's not the Empire they're afraid of.

It's the day their own people finally snap and start stabbing upward. The officer finishes her checks and slides my voucher back.

"You're clear. Next corridor left, elevator four to twenty-one."

"Thanks." I take my documents and turn away. I haven't gone far when I hear her lower her voice to her colleague.

"That kid is fourteen and she's already killed over forty people." A pause.

"…God. Society really has changed." I keep walking, just let something cold move through me. No, ma'am. Society hasn't changed. You've just finally started looking at what was already there. The world's always been rotten. Places like Dunan just know how to wax over the decay until it shines.