Chương 351: 151.Politics Is Just Like Cheap Condom 2

After Tobita's pod was wheeled away, the venue went quiet for about three seconds. Not because anyone had suddenly grown a conscience. Because everyone was waiting — waiting for the adults who'd been so good at boundaries, positioning, and wearing "we respect survivors and family grief" faces for the cameras, to remember what they were actually best at. The answer was three seconds. On the fourth, the Federation remembered it was very good at asking questions. Not the kind born from concern.

The kind born from liability-slicing. Procedural recapture. Authority grabs. Information hunger. Plus a little "if I get this story first, I get to step on my rivals all the way home." In short: the adults were back from the dead. I stood there watching the currents of people re-sort themselves, form up, and drift closer, and I had a sudden sense of déjà vu. It was exactly like sharks scenting blood in the sea. Except these sharks wore suits, uniforms, and identification tags.

"Here they come," Jess said, sliding up beside me.

"I have eyes."

"I'm telling you to get ready for the Federation adult specialty hour."

"Which part? Pretending to care, or interrogating people into nervous collapse?" Jess smiled.

"A little of both. Balanced diet." Fair enough. The military moved first. The Capital Ring Defense Command people — who'd just been pressed back down by Aki Kushima and Calando Rosen, faces already sour enough — regrouped the moment Tobita's pod left the field, like they'd scented an opening. This time they'd learned. No hard grabs. No forced takeover. No "please step back, families; this is now military business" lines that would make them look heartless on live broadcast. They upgraded their language instead.

"To ensure the restoration of facts and the protection of survivor interests, we recommend an immediate first round of summary statements." Listen to that. Restore facts. Protect interests. Those words are Federation-adult cosmetics. You know exactly what's underneath — "bring them in for questioning, now" — but on the outside, a very respectable coat of powder. The Academy's people drifted in from the other side. Not ordinary administration this time.

Academy headquarters people — the ones who normally live in the upper offices and carry the smell of file cabinets into every conversation. Uniforms without a single wrinkle, tablets in hand, eyes that said "we must protect our students," which translated to "the students need to be counted under our name first; how we package them for the outside is a discussion we can take slowly." In the ring beyond them, the Council's people. Those were more interesting. They didn't rush the front line.

Their positioning was prettier than the military's or the Academy's — like every step had been rehearsed in advance for camera angles and downstream attribution. When Calando Rosen was present, they were all very quiet, like well-trained shadows. The second Calando wasn't speaking, they quietly began laying lines for the next round of speaking rights. Adults really are busy.

Busy — before a group of people who'd just crawled off a missing list had even sat down — fighting over who gets to ask, who gets to speak first, and who gets to author the summary report. Watching it all, I suddenly understood a little better why the frontier was easier to read than the Capital Ring. On the frontier, the worst you'd ever get was someone shooting at you. The Capital Ring smiles first. Cuts later.

"The Yukikaze interim command group is here." Ash stepped forward, not loud, but clear. The spot he chose was subtle. Not the front. Not the back. Exactly the middle point where Lan, Akari, Evelyn, D, Maki, me, Jess, and everyone else still standing could all be held inside one boundary that could plausibly be counted as "one group." A simple move. A very clear meaning. —Don't split us up. I nodded internally. Yeah. That's right. You adults want to ask? Fine.

But don't imagine you're going to grind us one by one — while our heads are still ringing from the landing, while some of us are still being held by family, while some of us can barely stand on our legs. Aki picked up instantly.

"Until formal liability attribution and classification levels are confirmed, survivor students and the Yukikaze interim command group will proceed with collective statement priority," Aki said, voice level, as if she hadn't been on the verge of falling apart crying a moment ago.

"Any individual separated questioning is deferred." Someone on the military side frowned at once. The Academy side loosened almost imperceptibly. Made sense.

"Collective statement priority" was a pain in the ass for the military and the intelligence systems, and very comfortable for the Academy. As long as the group counted as one unit, this fresh pile of trouble off the dead list was still, for now, the Academy's trouble. And the Academy protected its own trouble fiercely. It was a commander who spoke first.

"This is only a first round of factual confirmation. It is not a formal separated interrogation." I almost laughed. That line had exactly the energy of "just a few questions." You hear it, you nod, and the next thing you know you've been interrogated into doubting your own existence, followed by two supplementary statements and a report on your attitude. Ash looked at the man, expression unchanged.

"The open-record portion. I'll answer it collectively." The commander paused.

"Pardon me — and you are?" Good. The moment that question left his mouth, I knew the speaker was about to have a bad day. Because plenty of people at the scene knew Ash — but not everyone had actually seen him in person. Especially mid-level officers who read rosters, codes, and procedures rather than faces. To them, a man Ash's age standing there was easy to underestimate. Then Admiral Bayer Vander finally spoke.

"Ash Vander." His voice wasn't loud, but it straightened the commander's spine on contact.

"Acting captain of the Yukikaze during its loss-of-contact period." The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Quietly, I thought: You're done. The man's face did change. Not because the name "Vander" alone was intimidating — although it was — but because this particular combination — a Vander son, plainly young, off a ship that had been missing, wearing an acting captain's rank — was the kind of thing you did not touch.

Touch it, and the reports waiting for you back home would not stop at one.

"Understood." The commander corrected his tone smoothly.

"Then the acting captain may deliver the first-round statement."

"Recording," said Aki. The Academy side started a recording immediately. The military activated its own recording module. The Council members, naturally, put up a third. One look, and my head hurt. Three parallel records meant every word from here on would become three versions, six rounds of markup, nine interpretations, and eventually evolve into twelve sets of meeting attachments titled "that wasn't what I meant at the time." The Federation really does know how to use language. Ash didn't bother with any of it.

He glanced at Lan first. Lan threw a cleaned-up summary sheet onto the shared display, faster than anyone fresh off a ship had any right to move.

"The Yukikaze lost contact during a frontier mission one year ago, sustaining multiple course deviations, system damage, and hostile contact," Ash said, tone entirely even — like he wasn't speaking to a room of adults who wanted to strip the ship down into spare parts for study, but filing an ordinary mission report.

"After former Captain Shun Tobita lost command capacity, the surviving command chain aboard assumed succession in turn. The ship prioritized survival and return, repairing navigation, propulsion, communications, and life support where conditions allowed, and has now returned to Federation-controlled space." Concise. Clean. Not a slice too many, not a slice too few. And entirely open-record material. The other side was plainly not satisfied.

"That hostile contact — which party?" the commander pressed immediately. Ash didn't even pause.

"Requires closed-session briefing."

"Number of engagements?"

"Requires closed-session briefing."

"During the loss-of-contact period, did the ship come into contact with forces outside the Federation?"

"Requires closed-session briefing." I was applauding him internally. This was the premium edition of "none of your damned business." With full military legitimacy attached. Beside me, Jess was almost laughing, whispering: "I think Ash could ride that one line till morning."

"Don't worry. Federal civil servants will absolutely find some way to question him until he can't." Sure enough, the Academy side picked up next. Not about the enemy. About people.

"Please confirm how the student roster and onboard order were maintained during the Yukikaze's return." Sounds gentler than it is. It was poison. Because the moment Ash started walking through personnel one by one, he'd be spreading open — who did what, who stood where, who held what authority for the whole trip. Settlement hooks for responsibility, credit, and procedural legitimacy later. Ash looked at the man.

"The interim structure was reorganized on the principles of survival, mobility, and ability," he said.

"Each individual assumed necessary posts according to actual capability. The full roster and timeline will be submitted within the formal closed report." The Academy man pushed.

"Does that include taking posts above authorized rank——" It wasn't Ash who cut him off. It was Aki.

"That question has no meaning at this point," Aki said.

"Without taking posts above rank, the Yukikaze would never have come home. Please don't project the standards of a secure conference room backward onto the survival behavior of a lost warship." … God, that was beautiful. It's rare that I want, genuinely, to applaud the Student Council. That line wasn't protecting anyone on the crew. It was torquing the entire frame of the questioning off its axis.

You may debate procedure later, all you want — but don't take "standard procedure" and hunt down a ship that had been out of contact for a year, whose captain had fallen, and which came home on a surviving chain of command. That isn't an inquiry. That's scapegoat-hunting. The Academy official opposite fell silent. At last, the Council spoke. A woman with a very soft voice and very pretty word choice. That type is always the most dangerous — she doesn't ram into you.

She wraps the question in "to better understand the situation," then slides the knife in, gently.

"So," she said, smiling, "the Yukikaze chose to arrive openly in memorial airspace. Was that pre-planned, or an on-the-spot judgment?" I almost whistled. This question finally entered my favorite territory. Because it wasn't about navigation decisions. It was asking: were you deliberately upstaging the memorial? In very respectable language. Ash didn't answer right away. He looked at me first. One look. I understood. Fine. Time for the person whose specialty is turning respectable language into plain talk.

I stepped forward half a pace.

"If you were holding a memorial service for us," I said, "then showing up at the memorial in person is the fastest method of identity confirmation available, isn't it?" The room paused for a second. The Council woman clearly hadn't expected anyone to take a point that was meant to be danced around for five rounds and slam it straight through as plain speech. I added one more cut.

"Or would you prefer we queue up, fill out forms, and apply to certify that we're not dead?" Jess coughed. Not from choking. From holding in laughter. Behind me, Maki very lightly pulled at my wrist. Not hard. But precise. That "you can trim it back a notch, or I'm the one cleaning up after you" reminder traveled from her fingers straight into my skull. I obligingly declined to add a third cut. The Council woman was silent for two seconds, then somehow kept her smile.

"Hoshino is very direct."

"People who have died once tend to run short on patience," I said. This time it was D, from behind me, who laughed very quietly. Not loud. But it had weight. That kind of laugh rolling out of a chest that size sounds like a wall being deeply satisfied with itself, giving one firm rumble. On the other side, Evelyn leaned against a temporary railing, left leg visibly still unhappy, face still in that "you'd better not ask stupid questions" cold mode.

She spoke up suddenly:"If you want to discuss the entry decision, then put the memorial's airspace control, the public-band latency, and the readout-reaction lag on the display canopy on the table beside it. Otherwise, this question has no analytical value." Oh. Savage. And savage in a very Evelyn way. Which roughly meant: If you're going to ask, spread your own holes open on the table too. Don't treat only our side as case study material. Several of the military men went visibly sourer.

Lan added, naturally:"Relevant technical details can be provided at a closed hearing." That woman was built for every occasion that required hiding a knife inside a standard sentence. Akari stood a little further back, not speaking, simply scanning the surroundings in silence. A person like her applies more pressure when she stays quiet — especially now, when everyone knew the Yukikaze hadn't come home thanks to any one individual.

The way Akari stood was itself a reminder: don't try to write this as a single-hero story, and don't imagine this group disperses easily. The next ten minutes were essentially a high-density Q&A war. The military asked about enemy contact. The Academy asked about the roster. The Council asked about decisions. The medical team tried to squeeze in questions about health. Public affairs hovered alongside, trying to translate everything into something that could air tomorrow without detonating too many departments.

The Yukikaze side had its own very simple division of labor. Ash took the main answers. Aki held the line. Lan fed in the technical sentences safe to release. Evelyn made certain questions look like the asker hadn't done their homework. Maki, whenever anyone got too close or too eager to split us apart, pressed the trend back down. Jess, whenever I was about to capsize the room, reminded me not to overplay it — a cough, a step on the foot.

D stood in the back and did nothing, existing like the sentence "keep pushing and see what happens." Akari pinned the group's boundaries in place like a nail. And me? When necessary, my job was to translate those polite questions back into human speech. For example——"During the loss-of-contact period, did the Yukikaze make military decisions beyond the authorized scope of a training vessel?" Translation: Did you do a whole pile of things you were never allowed to do?

"After returning, instead of entering the designated port, you chose an open arrival. Could that pose a risk to Capital Ring order?" Translation: Did you do this specifically to make the entire Federation look bad?

"Did the ship carry unregistered personnel, unmarked supplies, or equipment of unknown origin during the voyage?" Translation: Are you hiding something you can't talk about? … When the last one landed, I gave a quiet "oh" inside. There it was. The real question. Finally. The man who'd asked was one I hadn't paid much attention to. Nothing loud on his collar. No particularly winning face. Even his position in the room was ordinary — ordinary enough that he could have been swallowed by the crowd at any moment.

But the instant that question came out, I knew he wasn't here to join the excited masses. That type is the worst. Because that type is the one who sees the corners nobody else bothers to look at. The room went quiet for half a second. Ash didn't answer at once. Aki's gaze turned too. Aida finally pulled half her attention off the media line. And in that half second, I became very clearly aware of one thing. Those three minutes had genuinely bought us a lot. Names. Talking points. Boundaries. Time.

But buying time doesn't make the trouble go away. Some questions don't evaporate because you stand straight enough, speak prettily enough, or cry with enough weight. They only come later. And they come more accurately. Maki's hand brushed the back of mine. Lightly. Once. Like a warning not to move first. Like a whisper: watch. I didn't turn my head. But I knew she was there. That was enough. Ash spoke at last.

"All personnel, material, and equipment movements during the Yukikaze's return voyage will be fully submitted in the closed report, by classification," he said. His voice was flatter than a moment ago. Colder.

"I am not answering hypothetical follow-ups now." The man looked at Ash.

"I wasn't hypothesizing. I was confirming."

"Then you'll confirm it through official channels," Ash said. The air in the room tightened abruptly. And I suddenly understood that all the earlier questions — enemy contact, the roster, the entry decision — had only been bread before the meal. The main course was on the table now. At that moment, my earpiece chimed, very softly. Not the open channel. The internal short line. Lan's voice came through, clean, carrying no emotion at all.

"Hoshino."

"What?"

"Say less, from here on."

"You don't trust me?"

"No." A pause.

"Because from here on, it's not something you talk your way out of." …Fine. I hate that line. Because it's almost always right. I lifted my head at the adults in front of me — the ones who had finally stopped fighting over procedure and were beginning to dig toward the core — and I felt something like a laugh coming up. The Federation really does know how to ask questions.