Chương 61: 26.Off-Base Supply Run 26-1

By the time heavy armor class ended, my arms no longer belonged to me. More precisely, they were still hanging off my shoulders, but their only remaining function was decorative. The polarized shield's grip had rubbed my palms hot, numbness ran from my forearms up to the crook of my elbows, and the padding under my shoulder guards was soaked through like someone had just hauled it out of a pool.

The training ground stank of metal, sweat, and anti-slip powder all mashed together, pasted into my sinuses and refusing to leave. The instructor stood in the middle of the field like a tombstone whose sole purpose was issuing orders.

"That's it for today. Heavy-armor breaching isn't about who can smash the door into the maintenance deck fastest. It's about who can smash through without taking their own people with it. Turn in your gear, file your wear-and-tear reports, and clear the field in twenty minutes. Anyone who tosses a neck guard latch on the ground, I'll nail you up as the next group's door." No one laughed. Most jokes in a military academy balance on whether someone's bones broke. Today, everyone's bones were still intact.

Nothing funny about that. When D unshouldered the giant shield, the floor gave a dull shudder. I glanced over. He happened to look down at me at the same time, sweat still hanging off his temple, like a large-scale door-breaking device someone had finally forced into shutdown.

"Second door back there," he said between breaths, voice low as a drumhead, "why didn't you just let me hit it?" I yanked my gloves off and shook my hands out. My knuckles felt like someone had taken pliers to them.

"Because that wasn't a door," I said.

"That was a trap the instructor set for people like you." He frowned.

"It looked like a door."

"A lot of things look like doors. The General Affairs window, for example — sometimes it looks like a service counter, but in practice it's more like a legally registered meat grinder." A few grey uniforms nearby were coiling cables. Someone choked on a laugh and swallowed it fast. D thought it over for two seconds, then actually nodded.

"That's why you cut the side lock first."

"That's why I'm still standing here instead of being used as the live demo for human flight." He grunted again, like he really was taking notes. That's one good thing about him: he doesn't treat every word as a challenge. The downside is, if he ever takes in too much, the wall might be the first thing to come down. We followed the line toward the equipment return.

After class, the training corridor turned into some kind of demoralized trash-compactor belt — a bunch of freshly worked-over students dragging armor, shield frames, tie-downs and what was left of their dignity toward the exit. Someone's shoulder strap wasn't fastened; their teammate smacked it back into place as they shuffled past. Someone else's legs were going, walking like they were about to spill their stomach into their boots.

The cold lights in the ceiling bleached every face down to the cleanliness of a medical chart. There was already a long queue at the equipment return window. Harvey was crouched by a workbench nearby, fiddling with a dismantled retention clip he'd scavenged from God knows where, poking its spring assembly with a precision screwdriver. When he looked up and saw me, his eyes went to the scrapes on my elbow guards, then to D's shield, which looked like it had just been rammed through a small transport ship.

He snorted through his nose.

"You two had serious issues with doors today."

"The doors came for us first," I said.

"Fair enough." Harvey nudged the spring back into place.

"Leave your left wrist guard. The edge is starting to fray. Two more good scrapes and you'll cut yourself open before anything else." I tossed him the guard. He caught it smooth as if it were a diagnosis form. When our turn came, the person behind the window wasn't some random student. It was Linde Hoffmann. The General Affairs Officer himself. Most days, he stood behind the issuing window looking like the words "no compassion" had been heat-stamped into his uniform.

Thin steel frames, grey eyes, a collar so perfect you had to wonder if he filed reports in his sleep. The worst part was, he never raised his voice, never blew up. He just spoke in that completely reasonable tone that made it clear: regulations don't grow a conscience just because you're half-dead. Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator. He took D's shield record and gave it a single glance.

"Polarization layer overheated, three minor dents on the frame, grip padding salt contamination above threshold. Maintenance extended by two hours. Responsible party will report in person." D hesitated a couple of seconds.

"Instructor told me to ram." Linde didn't even look up as he drew a line on the board.

"The instructor told you to hit the door. He didn't tell you to treat the shield like it murdered your ancestors." I almost laughed out loud. Then his eyes shifted to me, settling on the scrape along the outside of my chest plate.

"Hoshino. Outer plate on the breaching team's flank armor, abraded."

"The bulkhead edge was nasty."

"When you file, use language that can actually go in a form."

"The bulkhead edge was rough, caused peeling of the surface coating."

"That sounds more like someone who's seen a classroom." He handed the board back, tone flat as the weather.

"Next time you coil your tie-downs into that mess again, I'll have you undo them yourself, length by length, until lights-out." I took the board back and wondered if General Affairs would ever add a field to the forms labeled: REASON I CURRENTLY WANT TO STRANGLE THE ADMINISTRATIVE SYSTEM. Once we cleared the window, Jess caught up from behind, arms full of her knee guards and a pack of training cold-patches she'd scavenged from somewhere.

"That face you made just now," she muttered, lowering her voice, "I almost thought you were going to shove the board into Linde's mouth."

"Too wasteful," I said.

"The board's innocent." She barked a laugh and bumped my shoulder.

"Heard we might get half a day off classes tomorrow."

"Who died?"

"If nobody's dead, they give you half a day off. If someone actually dies, they just change classrooms." She glanced around to make sure there weren't any Disciplinary Committee patrols, then dropped her voice further.

"Off-campus supply run. One day. The Upper House started counting transit passes this afternoon." I looked at her.

"Where'd you hear that?"

"Laundry room," she said, like it was obvious.

"Seventy percent of intel in this place moves between the laundry room and the dispensary counter. The other thirty percent's in the mess hall and tastes as bad as the soup." That part was true. We made our way back toward the dorms. The corridors were full of that half-dead noise that comes after classes: someone rinsing armor liners at the sinks, someone sitting cross-legged on the floor taping muscles, someone leaning against a wall gnawing on a ration bar like they were chewing on their own prospects.

Farther off, the PA was dutifully reciting tomorrow's morning formation, curfew, equipment maintenance and hygiene inspections, its voice as cold as if it had just come out of a freezer. By the time we finally made it back to the dorm, I kicked my boots off by the bed and nearly followed them down. Jess tossed her cold-patch pack onto the desk, flipped a chair around and sat on it backwards, watching me dig out paper and pen from the locker.

"What are you doing?"

"If we really get to go out tomorrow, I need to know what I'm buying," I said.

"Oh. And here I thought you'd just stand at the street corner and stare into space."

"I'd rather stand at the street corner and flip the Academy off, but sadly that's not on any approved supply list." I tapped the pen twice on the paper and started writing. It was normal at first. Moisture absorbers. Electrolyte tablets. Replacement clips. Medical tape. Filter tips. Anti-chafing patches. Glove liners. Compact sewing kit. Two durable pens. An old-model offline recorder—if the price wasn't insane. Harvey would probably approve; anything that doesn't grow its own mouth counts as useful to him.

Jess rested her chin on the back of her chair, peeking at the list.

"Okay, so the first half still sounds like a functioning human." I ignored her and kept writing. Two dozen cherry colas. A few light novels. The pen paused. Then I added the one with the title that looked like the author was picking a fight with the reader: On Why This Light Novel's Title Is So Damn Long and Whether the Editorial Department Has Lost Its Mind Jess stared at that line for three whole seconds.

"…Are you going on a supply run or on vacation?" I pulled the paper a bit closer, face unmoved.

"Those aren't mutually exclusive."

"Two dozen cherry colas?" She rapped the desk with her knuckles, as if observing a moment of silence for the quantity.

"You opening a depot?"

"Sugar, caffeine, fluids, mental stabilization," I ticked them off.

"Long-term stress resources."

"And the light novels?"

"Paper-based mental stabilization."

"That one title reads like the author got a concussion halfway through."

"Which makes it perfect for bedtime." I said, "Doesn't require much brain activity. Seeing lives more ridiculous than your own is good for emotional balance." Jess laughed so hard she almost tipped over, her chair screeching on the floor.

"Hoshino, I hereby confirm something today."

"You've finally realized the Academy isn't a charity?"

"No." She wiped the tears from her eyes.

"Under that face you wear like you'd use the rulebook as a gun rag, you've actually been hiding very cheap tastes." I looked down at the list. The pen tapped the line next to "cherry cola." Cheap, sure. But the things people can grab onto don't need to be sophisticated. Sophisticated things never make it to us, and if they do, they usually come with barbs.

A can of syrup-thick cola, a light novel with a title long enough to be a suicide note — at least neither of those demands three reports by morning formation or critiques your posture after eight laps. I flipped the page over, copied the list again and divided it into "essentials" and "nice to have." The essentials column was long, like the Academy's idea of a burial protocol. The nice-to-have column only had a few short items. It looked more embarrassing, but also more like something a living person would write.

Jess craned her neck for another look. This time she didn't laugh, just clicked her tongue.

"Alright. If they really let us out tomorrow, I'll go with you. First we buy the serious stuff, then we go adopt your two dozen colas."

"You make it sound like I'm taking home some kind of dangerous large animal."

"Close enough," she said.

"Cherry flavor's vicious." I folded the list and shoved it under my pillow. Outside, someone was testing the formation whistle. The sound was short and hard, like the system had reached in ahead of time and squeezed tomorrow's throat just to remind us: hearing a rumor doesn't mean your life is about to improve. At least for now, I had a shopping list. Half of it was about not dying. The other half was about not going insane before I got around to it.

By the Academy's standards, that counted as a pretty comprehensive life plan.