Chương 345: 148.Attending in Perso 2

The first time Dunan appeared in full on the main screen, the first thought that crossed my mind wasn't how beautiful or we're finally home. It was— Christ, this planet has serious trust issues. The twelve Skyshield fortresses hanging in Dunan's near orbit, from this distance, looked like twelve silver nails hammered into black velvet. They weren't simply large. They were the kind of large that made you realize: these aren't architecture.

These are a nation's suspicion, anxiety, and hunger for security, welded directly into organs floating in space. They circled Dunan. Like a crown. Like a steel-jawed trap.

"Seen enough?" Maki's voice drifted over, not loud, but precise enough to lift me out of my thoughts and back into the room. I made a sound and moved my eyes from the main screen back to the status bars in front of me.

"I was conducting pre-engagement geographic observation."

"The expression on your face looked more like you were deciding which one to blow up first."

"How dare you slander a pure and innocent first-year."

"Because I know you." Dammit. And I had no comeback for that. The bridge lighting had been dimmed one level — only the consoles, the nav charts, the tactical area, and the main screen's cold glow remained. Everyone was at their station. Not the ordinary everyone's busy state. Something closer to — everyone had already folded themselves into the mission, and they were just waiting for the last signal to push forward and bite down. Ash sat in the captain's chair, posture unchanged, expression unchanged.

Still wearing that face that made you think even if a second sun detonated in front of him, he'd lead with: confirm the heat source. Roy locked onto the approach vector. Lan had her headset on, three signal bands jumping in sync ahead of her. Aida watched the transfer timeline from the other side. Evelyn had seven or eight layers of EW script floating in front of her — the kind that made me want to go blind after a single look.

Harvey crouched beside the equipment he'd just dragged back from the edge of failure, wearing the expression of someone negotiating with a ward full of difficult patients he couldn't actually afford to break. Jess leaned against the tactical station, spinning a stylus between her fingers, looking exactly like someone who understood perfectly well she might get turned into a Federal training manual by the Capital Ring system's defense grid, and was still very much looking forward to the front-row view.

I thought this ship was remarkable. Other warships entering the Capital Ring system probably feel like returning. The Yukikaze entering the Capital Ring system felt like showing up to perform a socially staged resurrection at her own memorial.

"Two minutes to Skyshield's outer identification boundary." Roy's voice. Nobody wasted breath on a response. Because this wasn't a two minutes you could save with a joke. Dunan grew larger. Skyshield's outlines sharpened. The outer armor of those fortresses caught the light with a cold edge — like the entire capital world had been wrapped in a layer of very expensive, very unreasonable no entry.

I suddenly remembered a classroom at the Academy, an instructor saying with obvious pride: Skyshield represents the Federation's resolve. Looking at it now, I thought: Skyshield represents the fact that the Federation has never once believed things would go smoothly.

"Hedwig's side?" I asked. Aida didn't look up.

"Already in motion." A very faint marker appeared in the bottom-right corner of the main screen. A small, unremarkable blip, detaching slowly from behind the Yukikaze, sliding away along a service corridor so ordinary it was almost an insult to the eyes. Too plain. Plain enough that if I hadn't known in advance, I wouldn't have looked twice.

"Is that the escorts and Miss Maid?" I asked.

"First wave," Aida said. I watched that small marker for a second, and a strange thought moved through me. This is the most Yukikaze thing about the Yukikaze right now — On one side, preparing to cut in over the memorial loud enough to give the entire Capital Ring system collective cardiac arrhythmia. On the other, quietly slipping the one thing that couldn't see daylight out through a crack in the wall. One ship doing both things at once. Very broken. Also very impressive.

"Don't lose focus." Maki, without looking at me, delivered it mildly.

"I'm not losing focus."

"You've been watching the secondary track longer than standard tactical confirmation requires."

"You monitor that too?"

"I monitor everything that might cause you to say something strange later."... The Executive Officer is sometimes not an Executive Officer at all. Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work! More like an externally installed behavioral correction program for my brain.

"Ninety seconds to the identification boundary." Evelyn pulled up another layer of script, voice flatter than usual.

"EW equipment warm-up complete. First false-credential chain ready. Second reporting-delay script loaded. Third anomaly-priority flag standing by."

"Plain language?" Jess said. Evelyn didn't blink.

"Make Skyshield see us first, then doubt itself, then go ask its superiors, and by then it's too late to fire."

"Okay, that version has more human in it." Harvey cut in from the back, unprompted:"Assuming they don't all crash at the same time." I spun around immediately.

"You cannot say that right now!" Harvey raised one eyebrow.

"I'm just maintaining a culture of honesty."

"Engineering's culture of honesty is genuinely bad for morale."

"Morale is outside my maintenance scope."... I take it back. It's not that engineering is unsuited to reassuring people. It's that Harvey personally has no intention of doing it. Ash tapped the armrest. All the noise stopped at once.

"Harvey."

"Here."

"From this point forward — unless the equipment is literally on fire, stop broadcasting your personal apocalypse forecasts to the entire bridge."

"... Copy." Jess let out a low laugh. I'd bet anything Harvey was internally composing a follow-up question about what counted as a little on fire, but had enough sense to know this was not the moment to test that.

"Sixty seconds to the identification boundary." Lan pressed her headset tighter.

"Capital Ring system public broadcast entering standby. Venue primary chain nominal. Ceremonial fleet in position. Memorial opening music has one minute twenty seconds remaining." I couldn't help clicking my tongue.

"Real atmosphere."

"If you like it, you can disembark to a soundtrack," Jess said.

"No thanks. I'm worried I'd get emotional halfway down the ramp."

"You? Emotional?"

"What, I have literary sensibilities too."

"Can't tell," Maki said.

"XO, do you have some kind of quota to hit today? Can't clock out unless you get at least two shots in at me?"

"If today goes well, none of us are clocking out."... Fair. I shut up. On the main screen, the Yukikaze's approach vector was now genuinely pressing toward Skyshield's outer ring. The fortresses came in from the screen's edges, one by one — silent, massive, like judges who operated on their own version of reason and no one else's. There was no alarm sounding on the bridge, but I could still feel something invisible coming down. A scan. A lock. The Capital Ring system's defense net, seeing us for the first time.

"Contact." Lan said it quietly. At the same moment, twelve narrow identification sectors bloomed in the upper-right corner of the main screen, unfolding around the Yukikaze like a flower, layer by layer. My stomach tightened, just slightly. It felt like the moment before my first live catapult launch — harness locked, canopy sealed, every comm channel flooding in at once. You know nobody out there is waiting for you to relax, and you'd better not suddenly remember you're technically still a minor.

Evelyn's fingers started moving. Not the dramatic movie-style hammering of a console. Just fast, steady, precise — sending script after script downrange. The motions were small enough to look like tuning an instrument, but I knew exactly what that string of code really was: something like threading a fine needle straight into the nerve of the Federation's strongest defense net.

"First-layer contact complete," Evelyn said.

"Skyshield flagging the anomaly."

"Second-layer delay process loaded."

"Escalation priority raised."

"Baseline fire-control judgment shifted to pending review." My scalp prickled. Not because I didn't understand. Because I understood too well. Translated into plain language: we'd successfully made the meanest guard dog in the Capital Ring system pause with its jaws open, wondering if it should call its owner first. Ash didn't move.

"Lan."

"Copy." Lan drew a breath.

"Public ID chain standing by. Primary node locked. Subtitle access injected. Venue feed hasn't switched to main airspace yet. Injecting markers at the seven-second mark."

"Roy."

"Course holding. Attitude stable. Half a degree further, and it starts looking like a provocation."

"Good," Ash said.

"Then we stay on the right side of miracle. Not the wrong side of declaration of war."... Very Ash. Calm enough to make you want to applaud. Rational enough to send a chill down your spine. Aida spoke suddenly from her station.

"Second transfer wave, cut." The faint secondary line at the bottom of the main screen flickered once. Hedwig herself had left the Yukikaze. Nobody said it out loud. Nobody turned to look. But in that instant, I felt something strange anyway — like the ship was quietly slipping the one thing that most needed to stay invisible out a side door, while deliberately shoving her own most conspicuous bone straight under the spotlight. Stupid. And exactly the kind of thing we'd do.

"Fifteen seconds to the seven-second window," Lan said. The whole bridge seemed to draw its breath in by half a notch. Jess stopped smiling. Harvey went quiet. Roy's hand rested at the edge of the control yoke — a hand ready to yank the whole ship off a beautiful approach and onto an escape arc at any second. Maki stood by the XO's station, eyes never leaving a single critical status line. And I suddenly thought— Soon. It's almost time.

In just a little while, all of this — the cold light, the code names, the scripts, the reports clipped down to needle-points — all of it was going to collapse into one very simple, very blunt, very irreversible image: The Yukikaze, appearing over a memorial held for the Yukikaze. My heartbeat picked up, suddenly and clearly. Not erratic. Just heavy. Every beat landing.

"Ten seconds to the window," Lan said. Evelyn stared at her display.

"Skyshield's first-layer fire control still awaiting escalation response."

"Second-layer fortresses requesting cross-verification."

"Good. Let them stay polite a little longer..." That last line wasn't a report. It was closer to a curse. I almost wanted to laugh. The Upper House types really are terrifying, all of them.

"Nine seconds."

"Eight." Lan's voice wasn't loud, but right now, it felt like a fingernail dragging notch by notch across the whole bridge's exposed nerves.

"Seven." Lan moved. All three chains in front of her lit up at once. Primary broadcast node. Military ceremonial chain. Capital Ring system public subtitle system. Like an invisible hand had quietly pushed the same word into all of them simultaneously — quiet, but enough to make everyone hold their breath at once. Yukikaze. Not an incident code. Not an unconfirmed contact. Not an unknown track. Just the name. Only the name. Because sometimes, a name hits harder than gunfire.

"Six," Lan said, low.

"Primary subtitles injected."

"Five."

"Military chain acknowledging."

"Four."

"Venue primary camera beginning to traverse." The corner of Roy's mouth moved, just slightly.

"It sees us." On the main screen, the thin line representing the venue's main lens really was, slowly, turning toward us. My chest clenched hard. Down there — on Dunan's surface — someone was looking up right now. Someone saw the name first. Someone started frowning. Someone was still wondering if the broadcast equipment had glitched. Someone might already be on their feet. And we were still here. Still inside these seven seconds.

Still walking a line that had no business existing, caught between Skyshield's firing judgment and the entire Federation's capacity to understand what it was seeing.

"Three." Evelyn said:"Skyshield still hasn't issued fire authorization."

"Two." Lan's voice dropped lower.

"Public band's first wave of autonomous relay beginning to spread."... Oh. That was it, then. Because once the public bands start carrying you on their own, the situation stops belonging to any single department. This wasn't just us breaking into the Capital Ring system anymore. This was the entire Federation watching, with their own eyes, as a ship that should have been buried in the news archives drove herself back under her own name.

"One." No alarm. No gunfire. No neat, impersonal, thoroughly Federal volley from Skyshield. Just Dunan, still growing on the main screen. Just those twelve fortresses, still hanging above us like twelve iron hearts learning, for the first time, what hesitation felt like. Just Lan, drawing one short breath, and saying:"Seven-second window — cleared." Nobody on the bridge cheered. Because cheering, right then, would have felt stupid. But I saw it. Roy's shoulders loosened, just a fraction.

Harvey muttered a low fuck from the back — and at least half of that was the sound of still being alive. Jess let out the breath she'd been holding, slowly, grinning like someone who'd just danced along the edge of the rulebook and somehow hadn't gotten caught. And Maki — only then, finally — let her clenched fingers unfold. Ash was still Ash. His voice didn't rise by a single note.

"Good. Maintain approach." Then he looked at me. Just once. I understood. Not yet. But soon. Very soon, that seven seconds would step off Lan's boards, off Evelyn's scripts, off Roy's vector, off the gear Harvey had fixed that was barely still willing to act civilized — and land, for real, on the ramp of the shuttle under my feet. I glanced down at my hands. Not shaking. At least, not yet. Beside me, Maki said, very quietly:"Hoshino."

"Mm?"

"Don't look down."... I knew she was going to say that. I didn't look at her. Just kept my eyes on Dunan's light.

"Got it." And in my head, I finished the rest of it. I'll stand up straight. I'll go down there. I'll let them see we're not an incident. On the main screen, the venue's first-layer camera had turned all the way toward us. The Yukikaze's profile was beginning, for real, to cut into the memorial being held in her name. And I knew— The seven-second window was behind us. Now it was the living's turn to take the stage.