Miniskirt Space Pirates 1

Chapter 1: Hakuoh Girls’ Academy High School

Misa, dressed in a doctor’s labcoat, entered the exam room. The lights were off, the only illumination the glow of a screen.

"What's on the menu?"

"A retrofire atmospheric re-entry from low-orbit, three hundred kilometers. An all-manual deorbit and re-entry, that’s braver than I'd expect from some preppy girls’ school," Kane replied, staring at the exam room's multiple displays.

"Manual?" Misa ran her fingers across the console, bringing up the parameters for the exercise. "Are they trying to simulate an escape capsule that's lost its controls?"

"Nah, they're piloting single-seat small craft. Thrust-to-weight ratio is two-to-one, so the burn isn't the issue. The problem is the fuel settings."

Misa called up the data in question.

"Whoa, they're practically on empty. And anti-grav and inertial dampening are both disabled? Intense."

"When they say hands-on, they mean hands-on. A planetary recall order like this…this is no game."

"I’d expect nothing less from the elite Hakuoh Girls’ Academy yacht club. I wonder if all their training is like this?"

The one-man craft all started at the same altitude but their bearings were randomly determined. A pilot's first job would be calculating the six parameters defining their orbit in order to establish their ship’s location in a three-dimensional plane relative to the position the planet, and then calculating a vector using their velocity and heading.

"So how's our girl doing?"

"Not bad." Kane crossed his arms. "As you can see, she's already determined her orbital elements using astronomical and planetary scans, and she's started to calculate the re-entry curve to her landing zone. Her trajectory is going to be a retrograde one, on account of the planet’s rotation, which means she'll have to watch her re-entry velocity and corkscrew her way down. These dinghies have enough fuel in them that it shouldn't be a problem, as long as she's not too reckless."

"Oh my."

The next step after confirming position and speed would be to calculate a path to the ground. Since the parameters of the exercise forbade the use of external navigation assistance, the light and weather conditions on the surface were only verifiable from orbit visually.

"It's daytime at the target spaceport, which is fortunate, but her return path brings her straight through that low pressure system to the east. That hardly seems fair, does it? It’s like she’s being picked on."

"In an emergency situation, ideal conditions like ‘no low pressure fronts’ wouldn’t be realistic. It's not like it's a record-breaking typhoon or anything. It might be rough but it's not gonna kill her."

Misa checked the locations of the five other dinghies that had launched along with Marika's. None of them had yet moved from their starting positions, but their piloting data was visible on the monitor. All of them seemed to have found their bearings, but none had yet fired their thrusters or adjusted their craft’s attitude.

"They might be out there on their own, but they’ve got talent. Not surprising considering this yacht club. Come on, show us what you g—wait, what?" Misa's voice rose curiously. "She's firing her thrusters already. Is everything okay?"

"That was fast."

Kane's eyes darted across the monitor displaying the state of each of the dinghies. Marika's craft had already begun to fire its attitude thrusters and enter into a retrograde flight pattern.

High speed plasma jetted from the drive nozzle. Instantly the craft jetted to a speed of ten meters per second, fast enough to break its geocentric orbit. The small, one-man dinghy began its lazy descent.

"Hmm, if she doesn't decelerate, at this rate she'll enter the atmosphere at…"

Misa had the computer diagram the craft’s expected trajectory.

"Directly above the low pressure system, entering the stratosphere and avoiding its effects,” Kane remarked, without bothering to look at the results on the screen. “But if she keeps dropping straight down like that, she'll overshoot the spaceport."

He searched for potential landing sites near her projected touchdown point. The most recent projection placed it in the middle of the ocean. It was hard to find a spot where the craft wouldn't end up in the drink.

"What kind of trick is she trying to pull?"

"Maybe she's aiming to skirt the margin of error just enough to pass?"

"But then why would she have fired her retros so early?" Kane called up a different set of data. "People looking to game the system usually aren’t so sure of themselves. She made up her mind too quickly—what's she planning?"

Marika's dinghy's altitude was dropping faster than the others with which it had launched.

For planets with atmospheres, there exists no clear border between the atmosphere and outer space. Held in place by the planet's gravity, the atmosphere extends out into low orbit, where the air is so thin as to be practically vacuum.

"Are you telling me that the Bentenmaru's crack pilot can't figure out what this one little trainee is up to?"

Misa danced her fingers across the console, bringing up large amounts of data. The dinghy, its heat-shielded belly oriented toward the planet, continued to drop in altitude despite the decrease in velocity offered by the resistance of the retrorockets.

"Well excuse me." Kane's eyes were fixed on the movements of the dinghy displayed on the screen. "Maybe if I'd had a chance to analyze her scores from before. But this is the first time I've actually seen her fly."

"Her scores don't seem that bad."

Kane glanced at the open display in front of Misa.

"Hey! Isn't that information supposed to be private?"

"Someone left them in the yacht club's database. ‘A’s on most of her assessments, a few ‘B’s and ‘C’s on the rest."

"I wonder how hard and fast this machine is with the rules. But just from looking at her scores, it looks like she’s damn good."

His eyes turned back to his own display. The dinghy’s attitude was changing as its altitude dropped, the craft's nose taking a sharp upward turn.

"Wait a minute. Don't tell me she's doing this on purpose?"

The dinghy hung vertically, its belly forward and its variable wings fully extended.

"Doing what?" Misa pried.

"If this isn’t just some rookie mistake, then she's trying to project as much surface area forward as possible."

"Hmm." Misa nodded thoughtfully, then looked at Kane. "So, what does that mean exactly?"

"It gives you more drag compared to normal flight, which increases deceleration without using more fuel."

He noticed the angle of the dinghy’s variable wings were pitched at the base. During normal flight they would be aligned horizontally with the body of the craft, but now they were angled upwards.

"Is she aerobraking…?"

"What's that?"

"Decelerating using the air in the upper atmosphere. Lets you slow down faster during re-entry than you’d normally be able to. It's not really used much anymore, since these days re-entry is so much simpler. I wonder where she picked up something like that."

The dinghy's speed dropped in tandem with its altitude. Marika's craft continued to descend—the only one of the six yet to do so—its surface temperature rising steadily.

"But no matter how quickly she decelerates, she's still going to overshoot the spaceport. Even if she gains some room by altering her course to the left or right, there's a limit."

"With that quick deceleration and her aerobraking, it has to be intentional. She's can’t just be leaving things up to chance."

Misa watched the dinghy, its outline growing increasingly red from the heat as it pushed against the air of the upper atmosphere.

"If she knows what she's doing, then all we need to do sit back and watch."

"I guess so."

The vertical dinghy righted itself using its main wings. Its belly still red hot, it started its approach to the ground.

"Is she doing a lifting body re-entry?"

The dinghy manipulated its variable wings to gain the benefits of aerobraking while maintaining its forward facing. A steep, gravity-assisted re-entry—like that of a meteorite—would have subjected it to nearly ten Gs of force; it was necessary to use the craft's attitude controls to maintain a shallower angle.

"If she is, then her angle of re-entry is still too deep."

The so-called dinghies were modern craft with a two-to-one thrust-to-weight ratio, and capable of reaching orbit without the aid of boosters provided they had enough fuel. Even with a meteor-like ballistic orbit, heat wouldn’t be a concern.

Even so, Kane couldn't take his eyes off the data that flashed across the screen.

"Wait, is she changing the angle of her wings?"

"What does that mean?"

"She's not going to rely on the force of gravity on the craft alone. Once she enters the atmosphere she's going to try to corkscrew her flight path!"

Because of the dinghies' small size, after entering the atmosphere they would find themselves sheathed in plasma. That meant a blackout of data from the craft after leaving orbit. Watching aghast as the data on the screen froze, Kane switched to the secondary feed from the base ship in orbit. The only way to ascertain the state of Marika's dinghy now was through external observation.

"Is that difficult?"

"Maneuvering during re-entry isn’t something that a beginner should consider."

The red plasma tail trailed long over the blue surface of the planet. The force of the dinghy, still moving at an orbital velocity, compressed the particles of air in the upper atmosphere, raising them to red hot temperatures.

"It might be glowing red thanks to the re-entry, but the density of the air in the upper atmosphere is less than one one-hundredth what it is at sea level. The distribution of high and low pressure air pockets is extremely uneven—like wind whipping at water on the surface of the ocean. Not to mention that you're still flying at high orbital speeds when you hit the atmosphere. It takes everything just to keep the craft level."

"It looks like she's turning.…" The image of Marika's dinghy on the screen seemed to drift, entering a right-hand curve. "The radius is huge, but she's definitely turning."

"Based on these dinghies' capabilities, at these speeds I wouldn’t worry about her slipping up and catching on fire or breaking apart, but still…"

Kane watched the dinghy turn, maintaining its low re-entry angle as it made minor rudder adjustments, and shook his head.

"It's not impossible. If she's immediately above the low pressure area, then the stratification of the air in the upper atmosphere would actually be visible."

"You mean she can see the air?" Misa cracked an enigmatic smile. "She is you-know-who's daughter. I wouldn't be surprised."

"Still, it's not like she’s got a lifetime of experience in space. She's just some preppy high school freshman. Ah! She’s doubling back!"

The dinghy, still wreathed in high-temperature plasma, made a gentle roll. Its course shifted, transitioning smoothly from a right-wing dip back to horizontal and into a left-leaning tilt, as if it could sense the air currents.

"I get it now," Kane said, grasping the pilot's intentions as he plotted the path of the dinghy on the screen, now with the landing point mostly to its rear.

"The path of her turn takes her directly over the spaceport. If she keeps dropping in a spiral perpendicular to it, she can control her speed and altitude and come down right on top of the landing zone. If she came up with this on her own, just after the launch, then she is one scary kid."

"Don't call her a kid," Misa chided. "She's going to be our new captain, assuming everything works out."

Marika's dinghy emerged from its re-entry blackout at an altitude of eighty kilometers. The supersonic glider continued its lazy spiral towards the landing point, its variable wings straining against the thin eighty thousand meter air.

In the span of less than half an hour the dinghy had slowed from an orbital speed of thirty thousand kilometers per hour to barely one hundred, its wings fully extended as it approached the spaceport's five kilometer long landing strip. Even though the craft's final correction came early, slightly delaying its touchdown, the runway was long enough that the dinghy came to a halt after using up only half its length.

"Landing complete! Confirming present location, no issues with craft or pilot!" Marika announced, leaping from the simulator pod as soon as she had finished her landing. Of the remaining simulators, the furthest along had just begun to enter the atmosphere.

"Omitting post-flight check, and I'm skipping the briefing afterwards—I have to leave early!"

She bowed to the upperclassmen who had come to observe the training, grabbed her backpack, and dashed from the classroom in her school uniform.

Kane and Misa watched through the security cameras as Marika left, weaving her way through the halls.

"Extracurriculars aren’t over yet, are they?"

"Maybe she has an errand to run." Misa looked at the clock in the corner of the screen. "Could be why she tried to finish up so quickly."

She shrugged her way out of her labcoat.

"Finish up and make sure you don't leave any evidence behind. We have to follow her."

"Do you even know where she's going?"

"Don't worry about it, just come with me."

Umi-no-ake, the third planet of the Tau Ceti star system, was an advanced, developed world.

In the era before faster-than-light travel between stars was possible, a one-way exploratory mission—one that had never been expected to return—discovered Umi-no-ake, a miracle orbiting inside the habitable zone of a G-type star.

Capable of supporting life without the need for terraforming or adaptive equipment, and determined to be suitable for long-term settlement, it was given the name Umi-no-ake—"Ocean Dawn." Discovered during the dawn of the age of space colonization and with no native civilizations of its own, it became a major focus of capital investment.

Shin Okuhama, the site of the first settlement base, was a port city built along the equator on Umi-no-ake's largest continent.

The warehouse district—crisscrossed with canals and established at a time when shipping was still carried out primarily by water—had miraculously survived periods of both depression and war with its original appearance still intact.

Riding on a wave of nostalgia for the previous century, the red brick warehouses and canal-lined boulevards found new life as a tourist spot.

Although the streets running in between the canals and warehouses were embedded with the latest "smart road" control systems, laws were passed to preserve the facades of the buildings as they had looked during the seafaring heyday, the old storehouses and offices filled with restaurants and boutiques, specialty shops and assorted markets.

Manually driving her treasured, classic wheeled commuter—she’d had it brought down specially from orbit—Misa came to a stop in front of a brick warehouse adorned with a garden terrace.

"Hold up. What’s this place?" Kane asked, staring up at the old brick building from the passenger seat of the practically doorless classic car.

"It's where our girl works."

Misa carefully parked the classic car in the side lot—the hitching posts could very well have been originals—and climbed down from the driver's seat.

"Where she works? I thought she was a high school student."

"She’s a girl of many talents."

Misa opened the large, bell-equipped, natural-wood door and entered the store.

"Welcome!" the all-female staff chorused. They were dressed in matching black uniforms with white lace hairbands.

"Whoa." Kane looked with wonder around the shop laden with tranquil knickknacks. "Are they all real people?"

"It’s a classic style cafe. You've never been to one?"

"Please. I hit up a couple of the cafes and lounge bars in the station's first class terminal, back when I was getting a tour of our ‘prey,’ the Queen Serenity."

"Welcome. Will it be just the two of you?" a waitress asked, attired in an apron-dress.

"Yes. We'd like a booth, please."

"Yes ma'am. Right this way please."

"This place is too much. I wasn't expecting the sort of posh joint that hires live staff."

"It's just a normal restaurant." Misa casually took a seat in the booth the waitress had led them to. "Besides, robots and androids cost just as much. And they can employ real people under the pretense of it ‘building character.’"

"Wow. I've never been to a planet where labor was that cheap. So this is what they mean when they say ‘the boondocks.’"

Kane took another look around the cafe, converted from a stone warehouse. The ceiling was supported by thick beams and decorated with an array of hanging lights, patterned on old-fashioned lamps and putting off a gentle glow.

"This is the boondocks, at least when you compare it to the core."

Misa reached for the menu that lay on the table. It held a list of names of native foods and drinks that normally couldn't be found outside of high end restaurants on the way stations and space cities of major systems.

"Oh, they serve cold-brewed coffee here. What're you getting, Kane?"

Misa handed him a menu, and his eyes traipsed carelessly across it.

"I don't care, as long as it's not too sweet. Look, there she is."

Marika scampered out from behind a door marked "private," adjusting the hairband of her work’s apron-dress uniform. She acknowledged her coworkers with a glance and scanned the restaurant for work to be done.

Misa's hand shot up like she had been waiting for that very moment. Marika, keen for a customer ready to order, quickly grabbed an order slip and a clipboard and rushed to their table.

"Welcome! Are you ready to order?"

"We are. I'll have a cold-brewed coffee, and could you tell me today's specials?"

"Today we have a Southern Alician classic tea."

"Is there anything else you'd recommend?" Misa asked, looking back and forth between Marika and the menu. Marika thought for a moment, holding the clipboard in one hand.

"This was a good year for the local jasmine tea harvest. If you're not from around here, I really suggest you try it."

"I see." Misa queried Kane with a glance. He nodded. "I guess we'll have that as well."

"Cold-brewed coffee and jasmine tea. Got it." Marika scribbled the order down with the pen from her breast pocket and smiled. "Coming right up."

"Looking forward to it."

"What's jasmine tea?" Kane asked as he watched Marika scurry back to the counter bar.

"Tea with flowers in it."

"Flowers? Like, a plant? People drink that?"

"They're processed. It's supposed to be one of this planet's specialties—at least I hope that’s what I ordered. You should be stoked." Misa set the menu back down on the table. "She only just got here and she's already memorized the day's specials. I bet she's a pretty talented waitress."

"I wonder."

Marika materialized from behind the counter holding a tea set on a serving tray and nearly collided with a pair of customers chatting as they passed between the tables. She let out a small yelp as the platter started to tumble from her hand, but another waitress quickly reached out to right it, with Marika stumbling a few more steps before regaining her feet.

"It looks like she’s something of a klutz too, don't you think?"

"That could be trouble," Misa said, bringing her hands together in thought. "But maybe all she needs is a little training."

"She did manage to recover without dropping or spilling anything. There might be hope for her."

"Sorry for the wait!"

One more duck behind the counter and Marika emerged carrying a tray with the tea service and coffee cup balanced on top.

This time she moved smoothly between the tables of the cafe, placing the coffee in front of Misa and the tea set and pot in front of Kane in a series of fluid motions.

"Would you like me to pour it for you?"

"Ah, please," Kane said with a flustered nod, staring derisively at the flowers steeping in the pot of hot water.

"If you'll pardon me," Marika said, pouring the jasmine tea into Kane’s teacup with a careful, steady hand. "It's best to drink it before it gets cold. Enjoy!"

"Katou Marika?" Misa called out as Marika was about to leave.

The nametag on the breast of her apron-dress simply said "Marika" in a flowery cursive; she straightened up and looked back suspiciously. She bowed and then looked her two customers in the eye, a quizzical look on her face.

"Have we met somewhere before?"

"No, this is the first time we've ever met." Misa lifted her glass and stared at Marika, who had tucked the tray under her arm. "But I'm a friend of your mother's. I could tell right away it was you, you look just like her."

"Oh, is that so?"

Marika broke into a broad smile, but then quickly took another curious look at her two customers. Both of them appeared to be much younger than her mother.

"How do you know her?" she continued, smiling again.

"She was a big help to us, at her old job. Perhaps she's told you about it?"

"Not a word."

Marika shook her head. Her mother was an air traffic controller, and although Marika had wondered what she had done before that, she had never been able to learn what it was.

"Um, if you have business with my mother, it would probably be better for you to contact her directly."

"I plan to," Misa said, taking a sip of coffee before placing the cup back on its saucer. "But today we came here to see you."

"That's very kind of you," Marika answered after a pause, flashing her retail smile. She immediately seemed suspicious. "But, why?

"Would you say you like outer space?" Misa asked her, sporting a smile Kane had never seen on her before.

"Huh?"

"Would you ever want to become a space pirate captain?"

"Excuse me?" Marika asked, blinking in confusion.

"Are you interested in being the captain of a starship?" Misa asked again.

Marika laughed.

"A starship captain?" Once she realized she was being asked about her future, she nodded. "That would be great, wouldn’t it? To have your own ship, and fly wherever you want."

"You can, you know."

"Thanks a lot. Please enjoy your meal!" Marika bowed, one leg behind the other.

"So that's the captain's daughter, huh?" Kane said, watching the apron-dress figure depart holding her tray. "You think she'll do?"

"She's spirited, able-bodied, a little paunchy but at her age that's nothing to worry about."

Misa narrowed her eyes at their waitress. Kane knew her eyes were like laser sensors.

"She looks like her father."

"You think so?"

Kane took another look at Marika's face. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't reconcile the jovial, bearded face that he remembered with the dark-haired girl in the hairband.

"Her eyes and the bridge of her nose are a spitting image. But her jawline she gets from her mother. She looks a lot like Ririka."

"I never met Ririka during her heyday." Kane squinted. "They look alike?"

"It can be hard to tell through the apron dress, but she's got a nice figure." Misa's eyes were fixed on Marika as she went about her work. "She should fill out the captain’s uniform quite nicely."

"If she's willing to wear it." Kane drained his cup of jasmine tea. "You think she will?"

"If she doesn't, then we’ll be out of a job." Misa smiled. "They're so picky about those regulations."

Marika left the restaurant at the end of her shift, declining dinner with her friends and heading straight for home.

It took less than twenty minutes without the assistance of the smart road system, hurtling her small-wheeled truss-frame bicycle through the cyclist lanes of the twilit streets of Shin Okuhama in her school uniform, her bag slung over her shoulder.

After passing through an ID scan checkpoint to ensure that she lived there, she arrived at her home in a suburban bedroom community brimming with rows of free-standing houses.

She tapped a code into the numeric keypad next to the closed gate, careful not to mistype, and shuttled her bicycle through the open gate and into the yard. The security at the Katou home was tight and top-tier even for the area in which they lived—security was an obsession of her mother's.

The light in the entrance told her that her mother had already returned home as promised.

"Well that's rare."

A key and iris scan opened the door to the garage where Marika parked her bicycle, and she headed back to the front door where she tugged on the cord that rang the doorbell with their agreed-upon sequence. Once she saw the intercom's indicator light come on, she announced herself to authenticate the voice recognition system.

"I'm home!"

"Ah, welcome back," came the eager reply. "My hands are full at the moment, unlock it yourself."

"Roger!"

Marika opened the tandem electronic locks—it wasn't uncommon for her to screw it up, which would cause a buzzer to sound—and turned the fingerprint-sensor-equipped doorknob, finally allowing her to set foot inside her home.

"I made it!" As soon as she crossed the threshold she could smell her mother's pot-au-feu. "Oh, you're cooking dinner."

She slipped off her shoes and headed to the washroom to tidy her hands and face, then to her bedroom where she deposited her bag and changed out of her school uniform. She returned to the living room that adjoined the kitchen.

"I had some weird customers today," she said to her mother, who was in the kitchen with her back to Marika, watching the news out of the corner of her eye.

"What happened this time? You didn't bump into them again, did you?"

"No! They were talking about weird stuff. Told me I should be become a starship captain."

The sound of something shattering came from the kitchen.

"Are you okay?"

Marika quickly leapt into action.

"I'm fine. My hand just slipped."

"Are you hurt?"

"I'm fine."

Ririka started to collect the pieces of a broken salad bowl that littered the sink.

"What happened?"

"That piece of junk was cracked anyway. Its days were numbered."

She tossed the shards of porcelain into the dustbin and turned to her daughter, wiping her hands with a rag.

"Huh…you're already sixteen, aren't you."

Marika looked at her mother. She suddenly realized that she was tall enough to look her mother in the eyes.

"So who were these customers of yours?"

"A man and a woman. I don't think they were from around here. A ship's crew or something like that.”

"Oh really?" Ririka, hands on her hips, listened intently to her daughter's story. "And what did you tell them?"

"That I wish I had my own ship, so I could go wherever I want." Marika laughed, waving her hands in front of her face. "As if I would ever be so lucky."

"What kind of ship would you want?" Ririka asked, opening the cupboard to search for another salad bowl.

"I bet an interstellar cruise ship would be fun."

"The maintenance costs are hell though. And with a cruise ship you'd have to think about the passengers, you wouldn't be able to go wherever you want."

"I guess so. I guess I'd need my own cruiser or something. Can I help with anything?"

"That'd do the trick…"

The doorbell rang.

Ririka glanced at the front door as she retrieved a wooden salad bowl.

"Someone's at the door. Go see who it is."

"Are you expecting company?"

It was past nine o'clock, local and system standard time. Later than was typical for dinnertime, not to mention an unusual time for guests.

"All right, just a minute."

Marika retreated to the living room and ran her fingers across the bulky control panel that clashed with the rest of the interior. Its display sprang to life, showing two visitors standing at the gate both from the front and in profile.

"Sorry about that," she said, holding a headset up to one ear as she looked at the visitors' faces on the display. "Katou residence."

"My name is Misa Grandwood." The camera was focused on the face of the customer who had asked her all those strange questions. "Is your mother home?"

"Just a minute."

Marika turned around to call to her mother, but before she realized it Ririka was standing behind her, staring at the display.

"I should have known." Ririka took the headset from Marika and held it to her ear. "The ocean of space…?"

"Is mine for the taking," answered Misa, looking as if she were about to burst into laughter. "Geez, how many years has it been since those words left these lips?”

"This is Ririka." Holding the headset in her left hand, she used the control panel to run a security check on her guests. "It's not like you to show up unarmed."

The sensor gave no indication of either handheld energy weapons or large metal objects.

"This is supposed to be a safe planet. I don't need a weapon to come see your daughter."

"Who's that with you?"

"Kane MacDougal, our pilot." Misa dragged the man behind her out in front of the concealed camera, as if she could tell right where it was. Ririka unlocked the gate.

"Come in. I just unlocked it."

"Are we having guests?" Marika had listened wide-eyed to their conversation without quite grasping what was being said.

"An old friend." Ririka looked around the room, her eyes stopping at her daughter's clothes. "Go put on something more presentable. We've got company."

"Right."

Marika left the room, trying to think of something more presentable to wear.

Ririka popped back into the kitchen before heading to the front door. The bell rang. With a familiar touch she unlocked the door and undid the latch. Unconsciously her eyes settled onto the fire poker resting in the umbrella stand in the corner.

She reached for the heavy doorknob and opened the front door.

There the visitors stood, wearing black cloaks and black fur hats.

"It's been too long, Ririka."

Misa's face hadn't changed a bit from how Ririka last remembered it, well over a decade ago.

"It's nice to see you."

Ririka noticed Misa had both hands concealed underneath her black cloak. For a moment they glared at each other, Ririka's right hand also obscured behind her back.

"Now!" both of them shouted, and they both made their move. Misa flung open her cloak and thrust forth a magnum bottle of wine, while Ririka held up the three wine glasses she had been hiding.

"I knew you wouldn't show up empty-handed."

"How could I visit your home and not bring a gift?" She pointed the magnum bottle's label in Ririka's direction. "It's a '95 Cass Greystoke. Good stuff."

"Come in, come in."

Ririka turned around, still clutching the bundle of glasses.

"You too, pilot. You can hang your coats over there, and make sure to lock the door."

Marika changed back into the Hakuoh Girls Academy uniform that she had just removed and returned to the living room.

The two visitors, who had just passed the front door, were swaddled in black. Marika suspected that they were mourning clothes.

"Welcome to our home," she said, straightening her back and repeating the greeting she had learned in her etiquette classes. Misa, in her black dress, gave Marika a slight nod.

"It was nice seeing you at Lamp House."

"Please, have a seat," Ririka said, gesturing her black-clad guests toward a timeworn sofa as she emerged from the kitchen with a heaping bowl of salad.

"Thank you, Ririka. But first there's something I need to tell you."

Misa set the magnum wine bottle on the table and looked directly at Ririka.

"The Bentenmaru's captain, Gonzaemon Katou Yoshirou, has passed away."

Ririka set the salad bowl on the table and turned to Misa without missing a beat.

"I suspected something of the sort. You can tell me about it while we eat. That is why you’re here, isn't it?"

"Uh…" The color drained from Misa's face. "You haven't eaten yet?"

Ririka smiled.

"I actually got off work on time today. No thanks to a mob of cargolifters who showed up and the orbital defense force fleet. It’s your lucky day. My daughter happens to think quite highly of my pot-au-feu."

"You really should try some," Marika interjected. "Her pot-au-feu is super delicious."

Misa looked at Kane for support, her face panicked. Kane simply shrugged.

"It's not like that's the sort of thing that’s easy to ruin, right?"

Misa was silent.

"I mean we might as well. If the boss were here I bet he'd dive right in without a second thought."

Misa, her face still drained of color, turned to Ririka and gave a twitchy nod.

"I guess you've twisted my arm. I'll try it."

"That's the spirit." Ririka pointed Marika towards the kitchen. "Come and help get our guests some bowls."

"Right away." Marika followed behind her mother. Lightly, she added, "Who's Gonzaemon Katou?"

"My husband. Your father," Ririka answered, without looking back at her.

043

"Oh."

It took several seconds before Marika registered what her mother had said.

"What!?" Marika shouted as she entered the kitchen, her voice rising beyond her control. "My dad!? A captain!? He's alive!?"

"Not anymore, unfortunately."

Ririka opened the cupboard and removed a pair of bowls for her guests' pot-au-feu.

"But he had a good run for someone in his line of work."

"But Ririka! You told me he died before I was born!"

"What I said was that he was as good as dead."

She handed her daughter the bowls.

"Those two served under Gonza." It had been a long time since Ririka had said his name out loud, but it left her mouth without a snag. "I haven't seen him since before you were born. If you have questions, just ask them."

"'Just ask them'!?"

Marika's eyes darted dizzyingly between her mother and their guests.

"What did he do? Why didn't you say anything before now? There must have been a reason, right?"

Ririka grasped the edge of the simmering pot of pot-au-feu with a pair of oven mitts, then looked at her daughter and sighed.

"I can tell you one thing, that flightiness of yours certainly doesn’t come from me."

"Huh?"

"Listen, I was planning on telling you when you turned sixteen anyway. Now it's just happening a little earlier than I planned, is all."

Ririka set down the pot, pulled her hands from the mitts, and grabbed the cut-glass pendant that hung from her neck. She twisted the pendant’s crystal-shaped head and flipped it around, causing it to project a holographic portrait in the air. Marika stared in awe at the self-righteous-looking man dressed in a captain's uniform.

"I never thought you were the type of person who’d keep things like this around."

Exasperated, Ririka shut off the projection and let the pendant fall back to her chest.

"Wait! Let me look at it a little more."

"You can look at it later. Our guests are waiting."

Ririka slipped her hands back into the oven mitts and lifted the full pot from the burner. Holding the stack of bowls in one hand, Marika grabbed forks and spoons for their guests from the silverware drawer.

"So what kind of person was he?"

Ririka stopped half-way to the living room, still holding the pot.

"A frivolous, warm-hearted, good-for-nothing cheat. He was without a doubt the worst man in the galaxy. Now let's eat," she said, without bothering to give her daughter a second glance.

Kane calmly and carefully opened Misa's large bottle of wine using the Katou family’s heirloom sommelier knife.

Ririka poured the ruby red wine into four of her finest glasses.

"Me too?"

Minors were forbidden to drink alcohol on this planet. The water was clean and they had no custom of allowing children beer or wine in its stead.

"This is a special occasion."

Ririka filled three of the glasses completely, but poured only a splash of red wine into Marika's.

"Just for tonight you can throw one back in honor of that scoundrel."

"To Captain Gonzaemon Katou, may he find himself at one with the stars."

Misa raised her glass. The four of them brought their glasses together, and then to their lips.

Marika tasted only a sip and pulled her glass away, watching as Misa and her mother each drained theirs in single gulps. She and Kane, who had also taken only a sip, caught each other's eyes.

Everyone was silent, and the two women set down their glasses almost simultaneously.

"Whoa."

Marika watched her mother in awe—she had never seen her drink like this before. Grinning, Misa reached for the magnum bottle and refilled Ririka's glass.

"I see you've still got it."

"To tell the truth it feels like it's been ages. By the way, aren't you going to try my cooking?"

Misa twitched as she refilled her own glass.

"I'm afraid I'm not very hungry. But don't hold back on my account."

"Oho, do you mean to tell me that this bloodstained pirate sawbones is afraid of Ririka's special pot-au-feu?"

She dipped the ladle deep into the pot of pot-au-feu and pulled out a heaping serving.

"Is this a personal request?"

"I thought you could stomach anything."

Ririka looked down at the mountain of simmered vegetables and broth, ignoring Misa's nervestricken glower.

"Fine, hit me with it," Misa acquiesced, gazing at the yawning bowl of pot-au-feu. A gentle steam wafted up from the dark brown stew—at the very least, it didn't smell dangerous.

Misa gripped her spoon with resolve while she took a mental inventory of the medications she carried in her purse. Conscious of the stares from the rest of the table, she dipped her spoon into the bowl, scooping out just the broth to start with.

She brought the spoon timidly to her lips, her eyes shut tight as if she were sampling a poison, and thrust the spoonful of pot-au-feu into her mouth.

Misa opened her eyes, confused; she looked as if she had undergone a world-changing revelation.

"Huh? It's fine…really good, actually!"

"I've gotten better, right?" Ririka boldly puffed out her chest. "I've been studying. I can also make a mean mustard. Now then…"

She placed another heaping dish in front of Kane and grabbed the bowl in front of Marika.

"What happened to Gonza?"

"Maybe it would be better if we waited until after we've eaten."

"It might be easier to process on a full stomach. On the other hand, sometimes it’s better to just pull the band-aid right off."

Misa looked at Marika, her wine glass drained of only a sip, and then at Ririka, who was filling her own dish.

"You haven't changed, have you? Fine, let's get the difficult part out of the way. Gonzaemon Katou Yoshirou passed away. Two days ago."

"I didn't hear about any battles on the news. How'd that diehard loser finally meet his end?"

"It's a bit sad, really. I always thought you could space the man and he'd live through it, but in the end he was done in by simple food poisoning. He must have eaten something that didn't agree with him."

"Food poisoning," Ririka echoed, dumbfounded. "You know, I always told him to stop eating whatever junk he found lying around."

Ririka shook her head before returning her gaze to Misa.

"What time did they pronounce the deadbeat dead?"

"Two days ago, Galactic Standard Time." Misa fished a pocket watch from somewhere, flipped back its protective cover, and checked the time. "Ah, make that three days, as of twenty seconds ago."

"Did he make a good captain?"

"You know he did."

Misa raised her glass.

"To our loser of a captain."

"To useless old Gonza."

The two of them clinked their glasses together and quickly emptied their second round.

"So that means if you don't appoint a new captain soon, you're going to be forced to shut down."

"Right. Gonzaemon wouldn't let us come near you while he was still alive, but that's why we've come to see you now."

Ririka made a sour face.

"You knew where I lived?"

"Everyone did," Misa said with a casual nod. "But Gonzaemon forbid anyone from contacting you until after he died, and we all obeyed him. You've been using your real name this whole time, you didn't really think nobody would notice, did you?"

Ririka sighed and hung her head.

"You did?"

"Well, when nobody showed up or tried to contact me, I thought for sure I’d managed to disappear."

"Always the optimist. Maybe Gonzaemon didn't want this for his daughter either, but if we break from the agreement, our letter of marque is forfeit and we'll be left out in the cold."

Misa set down her empty glass and turned to Marika.

"And that's why, we've come to see you, Katou Marika, Gonzaemon's oldest child."

"Okay." Marika unconsciously straightened up when she realized she was being looked at. "What do you need?"

"We want you to become the captain of the pirate ship Bentenmaru."

"Pardon?" Marika asked, reaching for her glass. They couldn't be asking what she thought they were asking.

Misa reiterated.

"One contingency of the captaincy is direct lineage. You're Gonzaemon's only daughter in the entire universe. You're the only one qualified to be the Bentenmaru's captain. Will you please do it?"

"Uh, um?" Marika looked at her mother. "Is this a joke?"

Ririka shrugged, amused, and poured herself a third glass of wine. Marika looked back at the two guests. They didn't look like they were joking.

"Uh, you know I'm still in high school, right? I'm not even old enough to get a driver's license, let alone a ship license. How could I be the captain of a…wait a minute, did you said pirate ship!?"

Marika's eyes jumped back and forth between her mother and their guests. She must have misheard. Misa and Kane nodded, and Ririka calmly sipped from her wine glass. Nobody was correcting her.

"What do you mean, pirate ship? You said it’s called the Bentenmaru?"

Misa nodded again.

"That's right. A pirate starship. FTL, obviously, capable of long-distance flight, armed and armored. If you become captain, you'll be able to fly wherever you want."

"I…" Marika hesitated for only a moment. "No way! I can't become a pirate captain, I'm way too young to settle on a life of crime!"

She rose to her feet and looked at her mother.

"And what about you, Ririka? Are you okay with the idea of your daughter becoming a pirate!?"

The three of them all looked at each other and started laughing.

"Oh, you needn’t worry about that. We're legal pirates, with a binding letter of marque."

"Legal pirates!?" Marika screamed when she heard the oxymoron. "How is that possible? Piracy is illegal, isn't it!?"

"We’ll explain while we eat."

Ririka reached for the salad.

"I'm sure you learned in history class that our planet used pirates to fight during the war for it sovereignty."

"That was more than a hundred years ago!"

Umi-no-ake, the third planet of the Tau Ceti system, was once a colony world. As it developed and its population grew with each generation, like all colonies its resentment towards its rulers, the Stellar Alliance, deepened, leading—as typically occurs—to a struggle for independence.

The war came to an end with no clear resolution when the planets of the Alliance were swallowed up by the burgeoning Galactic Empire more than a century ago.

"The letter of marque—and you may get to see it for yourself—was signed something like a hundred and twenty Galactic Standard years ago."

"How can something that old still be valid?"

When Umi-no-ake's separatist government declared their independence from the ruling stars, they had no military. There was only a simple security fleet, nothing more than a glorified police force, and even after mobilizing a few junked freighters and privately owned vessels they were unable to match the numbers of the ruling stars' powerful defense forces.

Their first step was to form a military alliance with other colonies in similar positions, but even though they were united, the colonies were far-flung. Knowing that they were unable to fight even a single proper space battle, from the outset of the war the colonies began a campaign of unconventional and guerrilla warfare.

Lacking in military strength, the colonies went so far as to strike deals with crime syndicates and pirate guilds. They also issued letters of marque to several pirates, promising them bounties and clemency once their independence was secured.

Although the pirates who were issued letters of marque fought on the side of the sovereign colonial governments, they were not actually under the colonies’ command. The pirates were issued the letters of marque in hopes that they would attack the cargo transports of the ruling stars, disrupting their supply lines in the short term and increasing the cost of and distaste for the war in the long term.

The role of pirates in the war for independence is only one of many tales of pirates found throughout the galaxy. But for those born and raised on Umi-no-ake, it was one of the most well-known episodes of the war.

"But when the government asked the pirates for help, the limits of the letters of marque became an issue. There was no way of knowing how long the war would last, and forcing the pirates to return across the reaches of space in order to have the letters renewed was an unreasonable demand. And it's not like the pirates would even necessarily listen to them. So the government came up with a clever plan."

At the time, the average lifespan of a spacefaring vessel was five to ten years—even shorter for ships facing duty on the front lines—and even those ships that were preserved and had seen their lives extended would eventually find themselves made obsolete by the pace of technological advancement and changes in military doctrine.

They expected that the pirate vessels, shorted on supplies and maintenance, wouldn't last long against the dangerous supply fleets.

The colonies had also predicted that the pirates, after being issued their letters of marque, might simply sit out the war until its conclusion. So instead of requiring the letters to be renewed, the government included a list of conditions.

One was that the ship must continue to engage in piracy.

The most important clause, buried in the fine print of the contract, stipulated that the letter of marque would be voided if the ship did not engage in any acts of piracy over a certain period of time. This included situations such as the loss of the ship or its crew.

The letters of marque were also constrained by the ship and its captain.

Each letter of marque only applied to a specific ship-and-captain pair. If either or both were lost, the letter would become invalid.

If the captain were lost, but their immediate heir were to take over, the letter would remain in effect. No similar provision was in place for the loss of the ship.

This didn’t preclude the government, however, from issuing a new letter of marque in the event that a captain acquired a new ship and resumed being a pirate.

Though that was presuming, of course, that the state of war continued, and the aid of the pirates was still needed.

Under this arrangement, Umi-no-ake's separatist government received a military force that it didn't need to pay to build or supply, and the pirates received safe ports at which they could repair and rearm, and the promise of sanctuary when the war ended.

The pirates, raiding the Stellar Alliance freighters like commandos rather than as a unified force, at first met with great success. The ruling stars, who hadn't expected Umi-no-ake to be able to muster the strength to attack their extended supply lines, saw the raids as a simple increase in pirate activity, and found themselves forced to split their forces in order to provide escorts.

Many stories are told about the actions of the pirates, an intermingling of truth and legend. Cowed by the pirates’ overwhelming numbers, the ruling stars were forced to organize a fleet dedicated to wiping them out, and became drawn into a long game of cat and mouse. The pirates were even rewarded with a glowing account in the history textbooks of Umi-no-ake.

"Not giving the letters of marque an effective end date, however, is seen as one of the separatist government’s biggest mistakes."

"You know how the war for independence ended, I’m sure?"

"The ruling stars became part of the Galactic Empire," Marika answered. That was basic history. "The colonies and the ruling stars were able to end the war before it turned deadly. In the eyes of the Empire, both sides were considered independent powers, which meant that on the surface the colonies had gained their sovereignty, and the ruling stars could acknowledge their independence without any misgivings."

"That's right. That's what it says in the history books. But what do they say happened to the pirates?"

"The pirates, realizing that there was no place for them in the Galactic Empire, left on their own. Or something like that, I think."

The three adults shared knowing looks.

"Officially, that's what happened. The truth is rather different."

Misa continued with her explanation.

"The end of the war, regardless of how it came about, was supposed to have meant the end of the colonies' need for the pirates. But both the separatist governments and the ruling stars hadn't expected that the end of the conflict would be imposed upon them by an outside force. And as long as the pirates still existed, the issue of the letters of marque was left up in the air."

Marika's wine glass went neglected while she focused on the story.

"The colonies, including Umi-no-ake, had been granted their independence by the Galactic Empire. They could have used that as a pretext to end the war, or even to rescind the letters of marque. But Umi-no-ake, as well as some of the other colonies, chose not to. What do you think they did instead?"

"Hunted down the pirates?" Marika guessed, shrinking from Misa's quizzical smile.

"Quite the opposite. They didn't do anything. They didn't revoke the letters of marque, or make any official pronouncement. They didn’t even inform the Empire of the pirates' existence. Can you guess why?"

"Why? Maybe they slipped away in the chaos and everyone just forgot about them?"

Ririka laughed along with Misa at her daughter's theory.

"You may be young, but you’ve got a keen eye for how bureaucracy works. There are some theories that claim that's what happened."

Misa took a sip of wine before continuing.

"There are countless reasons and explanations as to why. For example, that the official who was in charge of the pirates got lost in the shuffle during the absorption by the Galactic Empire, or that the pirates decided to hightail it once the region became part of the Empire, and nobody tracked where they went. I prefer to think that the colonies wanted to maintain them as a force that was unacknowledged by both the Galactic Empire and the ruling stars."

When the colonies and the ruling stars were annexed, it occurred against the backdrop of the overwhelming threat of the Imperial Navy. The ruling stars assembled a fleet to challenge the Empire, but they were outnumbered ten to one, and when a second fleet of the same size appeared above their capital world, the government surrendered.

The declaration of surrender was transmitted to the Stellar Alliance fleet while the battle was already under way, and they ceased fighting on the spot. Most of their forces were spared, and both the colonies and the ruling stars were absorbed into the Empire.

"But the pirates didn't flee. Armed with letters of marque from sovereign worlds and officially recognized, they were free to travel about the Empire as they pleased. They weren't about to surrender their letters of marque."

"And the Galactic Empire just allowed that?"

"The Galactic Empire respects the right of independent worlds to govern within their own jurisdictions. Obviously they don't tolerate piracy, but a privateer acting with the full authorization of the government, well that's no pirate."

"So you're not pirates?"

"Not technically. Or at least, the Imperial Navy lets us travel through their territory as we please without trying to hunt us down or eliminate us. And that's how you get pirates acting in the open in this day and age."

Misa turned back to Marika.

"As long as the letter of marque is still valid, we're free to go wherever we want. But both the letter and the ship require a captain. And the bearer is required to be a direct descendant. So that's why we're here."

A smile slowly crossed Misa's lips.

"To have you become the captain of the pirate ship Bentenmaru."

Marika blinked, and then forcefully shook her head.

"There's just no way!"

Misa nodded.

"Would it be okay if I asked you why not?"

"Well, if I become a pirate, and a captain, that means the next captain has to be my kid, right? Since I don't have any other siblings."

Misa and Kane looked at each other.

"So if I'm a pirate captain, that means I'm forcing my kid to be a pirate captain. And I don't even know who I'm gonna marry yet, and I’m too young to decide what I'm going to do with the rest of my life, let alone my kid's!"

Kane sighed. Misa turned to Ririka with a stunned look on her face.

"Ririka, is she really your daughter?"

"Are you suggesting I lack her foresight and imagination?"

She looked proudly at the flustered Marika.

"This has nothing to do with forcing your child to do anything. I didn't think so, and I don't think Gonza did either. If he had, he would have come looking for us long ago."

Ririka piled a mound of salad onto her plate.

"You should be able to choose whatever life you want for yourself. I won't force you, and I'm sure Gonza wouldn't want to either."

"I know you must be surprised, hearing all this out of the blue. We only came here to introduce ourselves and to explain the situation to you."

Misa fixed her eyes on Marika.

"You don't have to answer right away. There's still time before change of captain needs to be submitted."

"Take some time to think about it. When it comes to your own life, you can never think too hard. By the way," Ririka said, turning to Kane. "Your boy doesn't talk much, does he?"

"Er, uh," Kane mumbled in the middle of silently eating his pot-au-feu. "This food is delicious. What did you call it? Pot-au-feu?"

"It's actually just something called oden, with a few twists." Ririka tilted her glass in his direction. "So, you do know how to talk."

"Between the fearsome bloodstained doctor and the legendary Captain Ririka, I'm not really sure what a nobody like me is supposed to say."

"Captain Ririka!?" Marika shouted. Ririka averted her eyes in shame. "The legendary lady pirate Captain Ririka!? That was you!?"

Frowning, Ririka refilled her empty wine glass.

"Well, you know, I did a lot of reckless things when I was young."

Marika ignored her mother's deflection.

"That marauding space pirate in the embarrassing cosplay was my mom!?"

Misa, unable to control herself, burst into laughter.

"It wasn't cosplay!" Ririka grabbed her glass and gulped down her wine. "It was a service, part of the act! People liked it! They still like it!"

"Service!? What kind of service do pirates provide?"

"It’s a different time, now," Misa cut in, cackling. "Space piracy today is a service industry. I can't say any more than that—trade secrets—so for now you'll just have to accept it."

Marika wouldn't much remember the taste of that night's meal. Only that the adults seemed to enjoy their fill of food and wine.

"Well, now that the booze is gone we should probably head home."

Misa drained the last of her glass and stood.

"What? Leaving already?"

Ririka set down her own empty glass with a look of surprise.

"We could break out one of my bottles."

"Next time."

Misa retrieved her pocket watch from somewhere and juxtaposed it with Marika's face.

"We’ve got an early day tomorrow. I imagine you do as well."

"Even so."

"Thank you for the lovely meal."

Suddenly Misa's eyes took on a distant look.

"I never thought I'd be saying that to you of all people…I wonder how Gonzaemon would react if he heard me say that."

"Gonza always said he liked my cooking."

Misa shook her head, a bewildered look on her face.

"Are you heading back to the ship?"

"No, we've got a room near the port."

Ririka opened the front door, cycling quickly through the complicated procedure. Misa's classic commuter was parked in front of the gate, illuminated by the street lights.

"You're still driving that old thing?" Ririka exclaimed when she saw it. It was modeled on a classic reciprocating-engine vehicle from the early days of mass production and mankind's first flight.

"It still runs. Well, then." Misa stepped out the door, her cloak billowing like a pair of black wings, and looked back. "See you tomorrow."

"Thanks for dinner," Kane said, slipping past and out the door.

"You're welcome, take care."

Ririka ran her fingers across the control panel adjacent to the front door and opened the main gate. It swung open on its own, and Misa exited through it, waving as she climbed into her commuter.

The hybrid turbine made a faint hum as the large, original acetylene headlights came on, and the commuter quietly rolled away.

"Tomorrow?" Marika asked curiously, watching the red tail lamps trail off. "Are they coming back tomorrow?"

"Who knows? Maybe you should clean up and go to bed."

Ririka stepped back inside. Marika called out to her from behind.

"Can I ask you something?"

"If it's about Gonza, it can wait until tomorrow."

"Can I ask you something else then?"

Ririka pulled the door shut behind her. She turned around and began setting each of the locks.

"What kind of ship is the Bentenmaru?"

"A medium-size category-I vessel," Ririka answered briskly, in traffic controller lingo. Category-I indicated a faster-than-light ship capable of entering hyperspace.

"That's not what I meant."

"They say that before it was refitted as a pirate ship, it used to be a warship. But since it's so old and has been overhauled so many times, there's no telling how much of the original ship is even left."

"A warship? It must be pretty strong."

"A military hull can be reinforced, but it was already an outdated, second-rate cruiser at the time of the war. Pirates care more about speed than they do firepower, so they strip out the weapons to beef up the drives. It's a finicky, fuel-guzzling pile of junk."

"Huh…an old warship. And it's been upgraded?"

"Do you think it could still fly if it wasn't? It was originally a mobile cruiser, but they ripped out half the guns, and probably most of the armor too."

"Hmm." Marika couldn't imagine what it must look like. "Are there pictures?"

"Go search for yourself. The ship’s famous, you shouldn't have any trouble finding some."

Chapter 2: The Transfer Student and the New Teacher

Marika's alarm echoed incessantly through her room. She searched for the clock—an old-fashioned model with a mechanical hammer that struck the two bells set on top of it—her hand extending out from underneath the covers to her bedside end table.

She brushed against a bevy of clocks, some upright and others toppled, but the grating siren of the hefty alarm clock on her desk failed to cease.

"Ugh."

She rose from bed and, still ensconced in her blanket and her eyes still weary, made her way totteringly to the desk. She shut off the alarm and collapsed into her chair.

She stared at the face of the clock in what light of the morning sun had penetrated the gap in her curtains, blanket still half-hanging from her shoulders, hair still tousled from sleep.

The stupor quickly vanished.

"No way!"

Marika stripped off her pajamas in a flash, all but transmuting herself into the blouse and skirt of her school uniform, grabbed her jacket and backpack, and bolted down the stairs.

"Ririka, why didn't you wake me up!"

"I did."

Ririka was holding a thick dagwood sandwich filled with fried egg, grilled ham, lettuce, and tomato in one hand while she went about her routine of checking the morning news. The wall's large digital screen was displaying six news channels from across space, everything from the galactic networks to local stations. Marika knew that her mother could pick out the differences in pronunciation between the Galactic Standard tongue and the local dialects, a feat that she herself couldn't replicate.

"An hour ago, and three more times every fifteen minutes after that. You even responded."

Ririka grabbed a large mug of black coffee.

"No way, I didn't hear a thing."

Marika flew into the washroom and began expeditiously brushing her hair while her mouth was still clamped down on her toothbrush.

"Were you up late?"

"Who could sleep after what I heard yesterday!?" she yelled from the washroom, darting out as she slipped her arms through the jacket of her uniform. She downed the glass of juice waiting at her seat at the breakfast table and grabbed her own, less ostentatious sandwich.

"I'm going to be late, I'm out!"

"Don't let yourself get caught up with any strange men."

Marika thrust her feet into her shoes and dashed out the front door, pulled her bicycle from the garage, and impatiently executed the sequence to open the gate. She stuffed her cheeks with sandwich and began pedaling furiously.

"Augh, I'm so late!"

Even sprinting as hard as she could, indifferent to whether she was making a spectacle of herself, Marika had never made it to school in less than twenty minutes. Resolved to set a new personal best, she steered one-handed while cramming the sandwich deeper into her mouth.

She heard a trumpet-like honking—something she had only ever heard before in movies— and veered even further to the right-hand side of the bicycle lane.

"Morning. In a hurry?"

The familiar voice drew Marika's attention to her left, and she tried to shout, though her mouth was still stuffed with sandwich.

The jet-black classic commuter, now with it's top down, was cruising in the lane next to her, humming quietly as it matched pace with with her bicycle. Behind the wheel was Misa, dressed in a career woman’s business suit.

Marika pounded against her chest, finally forcing the last of the breakfast sandwich down her throat.

"Misa Grandwood!?"

"Oh, you remembered my name?" Misa raised her sunglasses and smiled. "Need a lift? I'll drive you."

"What about my bike?"

Misa pointed over her shoulder at the back seat. Marika's pace hadn't slowed.

"It should fit back there."

"Uh, um…"

Don't get in cars with strangers. She's a pirate. She's your mother's friend. You're going to be late. Marika's mind was a whirlpool of consideration, stipulation, and rationalization.

It didn't take her long to arrive at a decision.

"I’d appreciate it!"

She swung her bicycle into the vehicle lane and grabbed the commuter's rear door. Misa, who had intended to stop, watched through her rear-view mirror and turned around, shouting.

"Hey, wait!"

"Just keep going!"

One foot on the running board, Marika twisted the simple lever handle and opened the rear door. Shifting her weight to her left foot, she tumbled into the back seat, pulling the small, light-weight bicycle along with her.

"Oh geez."

Misa steered with one hand while peering into the back seat through the mirror, where she could see Marika's loafered feet and the bicycle’s tire jutting up into the air.

"You okay?"

"I'm fine. You should keep your eyes on the road when you're driving!"

Marika nestled her backpack into the cushion of the back seat and swapped places with the bicycle before sitting up straight. She closed the flapping rear door, ensured that her bicycle was wedged into place against the floorboard, and clambered over the low backrest and into the front passenger seat.

"Thanks, sorry for all the ruckus."

"Are you always doing things like that?"

"As if!" Marika returned her backpack to the back seat and rummaged around for the passenger side seat belt. "I usually take my time getting to school. We've got morning drills."

She finally managed to fish the harness from in between the backrest and the seat. The buckle was missing, leaving only a ripped strap.

"Why do you ask?"

Marika gave up on the seat belt and sat up again.

"Because you climbed into a moving car from your bike like you've been doing it your whole life. Hold on."

Misa accelerated down the interchange that linked the residential area to the freeway. Her off-the-grid commuter, unrestrained by the oversight of the smart road, tore onto the freeway with a speed belied by its classic contours.

"Whoa!" Marika exclaimed unexpectedly as she was struck by the wind in the passenger seat of the classic car, its front windshield its only barrier. The commuters of Shin Okuhama were all closed-bodied; an open car was an anomaly.

The commuter slid into the high-speed freeway traffic on its thin rubber tires. It moved past the daily drivers and tractor trailers coming from the port and into the passing lane.

"This is awesome!" Marika refused to avert her eyes as the wind ripping through the cabin whipped her hair about. "I never knew open cars were this loud."

"Once it really gets flying, you can't even talk," Misa shouted, her hands clutching the wheel. With the congested interchange behind them, she moved the commuter back into the normal travel lane en route to the suburbs. She dropped their speed to match that of the cars around them.

"Are you going to be on this planet for a while?"

Misa smiled at Marika in the passenger seat.

"We can't operate the ship without a captain. I've got a side gig, for now."

067

"Doing what?"

"Fortunately there was an opening for a school physician."

Marika turned to Misa, fearing the worst.

"I'm going to be Hakuoh Girls' Academy's new doctor."

"What!?"

The school's current physician was a decrepit old hag: it was said she had been there for ages. According to the stories passed down by the students who assisted in her office, she knew the names and faces of every student despite having never taught a single class.

"What happened to the withered witch?"

"They're letting her take a special leave of absence, in commemoration of fifty years of service." Misa laughed. "So you call her the withered witch? I can see that."

Marika looked away, realizing she had been caught. Beyond the orchard in the distance she could see the minarets of the school building, apparently a facsimile of the classical architecture of the ruling stars.

"Should I drop you off in the faculty lot?"

"If you let me out next to the school I'll make it the rest of the way myself." Marika checked the face of the watch on her left wrist. "Thanks to you I made it without having to set a new record."

"Please don't jump out on your bike this time."

"Fine, okay." Marika looked at her bicycle in the back seat, and then back at Misa in the driver's seat. "Did you take this job so you could try to win me over?"

Misa smiled with her hands on the wheel.

"Not really. It's to protect you, regardless of what you decide."

"Protect me?" Marika looked confused. "Do I need protection?"

"Government-sanctioned pirate ships are an endangered species in the Empire. Someone has to preserve them before they go extinct."

Marika looked perturbed as she pondered the truth hidden inside Misa's joke.

"Call me a protector or a bodyguard or whatever, what's important is that your life stays peaceful."

Misa spun the wheel and pulled onto the interchange ramp, leaving the freeway behind them.

"We're almost there. Should I let you out here?"

Marika locked up her bicycle at her assigned space in the bike lot and grabbed her backpack. Though she had cut her commute time thanks to Misa, there wasn't much time left before the start of homeroom.

As she scurried towards the front doors of the school, she remembered what day it was and realized that she had made a devastating miscalculation.

"My classic lit homework!"

Her plan had been to finish it after dinner, but thanks to the unexpected visitors and their unexpected news, it had completely slipped her mind. She started to dash towards the entrance. Perhaps if she hurried to class and cracked open her books she could still finish it by fifth period.

She charged up the glass-lined stairwell towards classroom 1-E, passing several of her classmates on the way.

"Hey! Marika!"

Endou Mami. Marika had known her since they both ended up lost together on their first day of elementary school. She noticed Marika and waved.

"Morning! Hey, did you hear? We’ve got a new teacher, some young guy."

"A new teacher? We're getting a new school doctor, but she's a woman."

"What do you mean? I’m talking about our homeroom! Since our last teacher is in the hospital with broken bones after getting in that glider crash? Guess they found a replacement."

"Really?"

About two weeks prior their phys ed teacher, who was also the yacht club's advisor, had attempted to set a new record in a homemade, human-powered aircraft. He set the record but botched the landing, broke both of his legs, was still hospitalized, and even with a positive prognosis was going to miss the rest of the semester. Marika brought up her desk’s display and grabbed a stack of composition paper from her backpack. Reports for her classic literature class were to be written by hand; there was little point in copying a classmate's work.

"That didn’t take them long."

The renowned Hakuoh Girls' Academy, with its focus on providing a comprehensive K-12 education, attracted students from as far away as neighboring star systems. The hiring process for new teachers involved a background check utilizing detective agencies and private investigators, and was said to take years.

"But he only made the record attempt last Sunday. It hasn't even been a week."

"Rikki said she saw him in the faculty office earlier, apparently he's a catch!"

Marika called up the information she needed for her report while she listened to Mami's delighted squeals.

"Ah, lucky…wait a minute, did you say he was young?"

She heard excited screams coming from the hallway. The front door of the classroom opened and an avalanche of students poured into their seats.

Marika jumped from her chair when she saw the face of the young man who followed them.

Classroom 1-E was a whirlwind of high-pitched squeals. There, standing at the front rostrum and holding the large, black, electronic teacher's file was her visitor from the day before.

"All right everyone, quiet down."

Kane opened the electronic file and looked around the classroom, trying to match the students' faces with their seats.

"Attention!" the class officer shouted. "Stand! Bow" she called out a beat later.

The students all stood and bowed per their conditioning. Kane nodded and set the file on top of the podium.

"Take your seats. I'm sure some of you have already heard the rumors. I'll be taking over this class for Mr. Kipling, who’s in the hospital after an accident a few days ago. My name is Kane MacDougal."

Ignoring the students’ shrieks and cries, Kane turned to the large display at the front of the classroom—they still called it a “blackboard” out of tradition—and scrawled his name in large letters using a light pen.

"I teach physics, and my focus in college was astrophysics. If you want to know more, you can check the school's database; it should be updated sometime today."

Kane looked around the classroom, his eyes stopping for a moment on Marika.

"And I'm sorry to disappoint you all, but I am married."

The classroom filled with protests.

"Now, there's one other announcement I have to make. Chiaki, if you would…"

A girl entered the classroom. She was wearing a uniform, her features doll-like.

"This is Chiaki Kurihara. Her parents’ work moved them here from the Uzumasa system, and she's transferring from our sister campus on Umi-no-mori. Chiaki, please introduce yourself."

"I'm Chiaki Kurihara."

Kane handed the long-black-haired, brown-eyed, porcelain-skinned, classical-featured girl his light pen and she wrote her name, first in Galactic Standard script, then in Chinese characters, on the blackboard—a full-color, high definition display whose name few understood.

"My father transferred to Umi-no-ake from Umi-no-mori due to the trading company that he operates. I'm always excited to see new planets. Thank you."

Awash in the focused gaze of the entire classroom, Chiaki finished her unfaltering introduction and bowed.

"I'm sure that a new teacher and a new student may be a lot for you to handle, but don't forget that summer break is coming up as well. You'll have plenty of time to acclimate yourselves to your new teacher next semester, so for now let's make our new student feel at home. Now, your desk…"

Kane brought up a seating chart on the podium's display. Chiaki Kurihara's name flashed above a seat in the back row.

"It's that one, over there."

Chiaki found her seat on the podium's display, bowed to Kane, and carried her old-fashioned school bag with her between the rows of desks.

She peered over the heads of the other students in the classroom, finally coming to a stop on Marika.

Marika, who was still laboring hope against hope on her report, her desk's display set to not pop up so as to avoid drawing attention, sensed that she was being stared at, and looked up. She and the new student locked eyes.

"Wow, she's pretty."

The new girl's gaze drilled into Marika as she walked towards her; was she trying to tell her something? Dismissing it as her imagination, Marika turned and watched the transfer student just as she tripped and began to fly face first to the floor.

"Watch out!"

The tumbling Chiaki grabbed Marika's suddenly outstretched hand and somehow managed to right herself in the space between the desks.

Kane, who had been watching Chiaki as she walked to her seat, looked around the classroom. His eyes had been fixed on her, and he knew that there had been nothing there for her to trip over.

"Ah, pardon me," Chiaki said to Marika as she regained her footing. She turned toward the front of the class. "My apologies. I'm always tripping over nothing."

"Just be careful."

"I will." Without turning around, she added in a whisper, "Thanks, Marika."

"It was nothing," Marika answered reflexively, but then turned towards Chiaki in a flash of realization. "How do you know my name?"

"Is she just a klutz?" Kane wondered to himself, returning to his podium once Chiaki had made it to her seat.

"All right, I'll be taking attendance. For today, please stand when I call your name. That should help me to remember everyone's faces. Eleanor Matthews?"

Marika had wanted to spend the next break between classes charging into the faculty office and demanding to know why not only the school doctor's office but even her own homeroom had been infiltrated by pirates, but she didn't have the time.

She spent both the break and all of her classes through fourth period diligently working on her report, the composition paper slipped clandestinely between the pages of her notebook, but she still wasn’t able to finish.

Foregoing lunch in the cafeteria, she asked Mami to grab her something, and spent the entire midday break glued to her desk, putting the finishing touches on her paper.

Their classics teacher, Mr. Antick, entered the classroom just as she was penning her final sentence. With no time to review, she merely ensured that she had written her name correctly while bowing at the start of class.

Per usual, Antick collected their papers right at the start of class. Marika handed in her freshly written report and somehow forced herself to make it through class without losing consciousness.

"Finally!"

As their teacher left and the classroom began to fill with the between-class clamor, Marika collapsed onto her desk.

"Nice job." Mami placed a boxed lunch from the cafeteria on Marika's head. "Eat up!"

"Food!"

Marika had only ten minutes to hurry up and eat before their next class started. She grabbed the boxed lunch from atop her head, placed it on her desk, opened it up, and began chomping into the assortment of sandwiches wedged inside.

"I can't believe you made it. I thought there was no way."

"Only because I left the whole thing super vague."

Marika, cheeks stuffed with sandwich, opened the bottled drink that came packed with her lunch.

"But Antick is a stickler, I doubt I'm going to see another miraculous A+ like the last time. An average grade if I'm lucky; at least something more than the minimum for turning it in, I hope."

"You take things too seriously." Nibbling on one of the sandwiches, Mami stared at the honor student she had known since elementary school. "I know that's the secret to your good grades, but I just can’t keep up."

"It’s not a secret, really. I just do a lot of research for reports, which makes the tests a breeze."

She noticed that the rest of the class was staring towards the back of the room, and grabbed her drink and turned around.

Her eyes landed on the new student in the back row. She hurriedly swallowed her sandwich and forced a smile.

"That new girl sure is popular."

"It's weird to transfer this late in the semester, even if it’s from one of our sister schools." Mami watched the other students chatting up the new transfer. "They all want her to join their clubs, but she already said that she was going to join the same club as her old school."

"Huh, one of the art clubs?"

"Nope. Science-slash-sports. She said she was in the yacht club, like you."

"What?"

Marika had been in such a rush to put down her sandwiches once class ended that she had forgotten the strange, uneasy feeling from before. She looked back at the transfer student again.

Chiaki was still watching her.

"It's not like our yacht club is famous or anything."

"I mean, if you're serious about it there are technical schools and athletic schools, but I guess we’ve got better equipment, on account of being so big and rich."

"Our equipment? Huh."

Hakuoh Girls' Academy even had its own berth on the way station up in orbit. It was where they moored the cruiser that they used for training. Marika had never seen the thing fly, though she had been there several times for hands-on training in dock.

"Sure we’ve got a training ship, but that thing's a relic, we don't have anyone qualified to actually let us fly it, and with our advisor in the hospital we probably won't even be able to use it this summer."

In a flash of realization, Marika tapped at the popup that had been left open on her desktop display. Faculty directory, homeroom, subject, advisor.

"I knew it!"

"What is it?" Mami glanced at the display and saw their new teacher's profile. "Ah, so you do want to get in on that?"

"That's not it. Look." Marika pointed at a section of the display. "He's going to be the yacht club's advisor."

"Really? Pretty quick decision for someone who just got here."

Mami grabbed the light pen from Marika's desk and started tapping away at the display, bringing up more personal details. There was a list of various qualifications.

"Wait a minute, what's this?" she exclaimed. "He's got a Class-2 heavy starship license? He could be a captain, what's he doing teaching?"

It’s because he's a pirate; but Marika couldn’t say that.

"I wonder if it's legit?"

A pirate would have no trouble forging licenses or a work history. Marika noticed that, among other professional qualifications such as an industrial robot operator’s license and a vacuum welder's license, he also held astronomy and physics teaching qualifications.

"Forget being a captain, it looks like he could run his own one-man repair shop."

There was no way around it, there was something fishy about both the new physics teacher and the surprise transfer student joining Hakuoh's unremarkable yacht club. But Marika put it out of her mind as she reached into the lunch box for another sandwich.

"Whatever. If we have an advisor then our summer training camp should be safe, and I'm glad to have another club member."

"Whew!"

Kane entered the school physician's office and made a scene of loosening his necktie before settling onto a wheeled stool.

"Oh man, the pressure! Who knew teaching at a girls' school would so exhausting."

"Oh? I thought you'd be happier. Didn't you call this every man's dream job?"

"I hereby retract my former statement. I thought I was just imagining things when we first came to scope this place out yesterday, but these schoolgirls, it's like they're…"

He took a moment to find the right words.

"Under quarantine? On death row?"

"Or a POW camp?"

"Yeah, exactly. And they go all proper at a moment's notice like it's some kinda propaganda or PR thing."

Kane formed a pistol with his fingers and pointed it at Misa.

"You didn't do time here, did you?"

"Don’t say it like I'm some sort of ex-con." She gave him a cold stare. "I went to a normal high school."

"Have you looked over the students' data?"

"Personal records and parents' jobs, so far." Misa called up the large display built into the examination table. "There's a lot of talent here. One's an inter-high and galactic level competitive gamer, another's got a record for hacking."

"Sounds promising. Any red flags?"

"Plenty of parents in the military, or intelligence, or the police. Best to keep an eye on them in the classroom."

"Have you checked this one?"

Kane ran his fingers across the panel and brought up the data on the latest addition to his homeroom class.

Chiaki Kurihara's profile, headshot included, flashed onto the display.

"A transfer at this time of the year? And she wants to join the yacht club?”

Misa looked at the student's personal records displayed on the screen and furrowed her brow.

"That is pretty suspicious, isn't it."

"As suspicious as we are."

Kane tapped away at the electronic file, bringing up more data.

"I checked it against her former school's database and couldn't find any mistakes or inconsistencies. Wouldn't take a genius to put together something this level, though. It would be easy enough to send out feelers and check with the school directly, but even then you can't be sure it's not a setup."

"You thinking of anyone specific?"

"Hmm." Kane opened his own personal communicator. "I already sent all the classified data to the Bentenmaru and asked Hyakume to check it out, but it's not like we’ve got a full criminal rolodex or anything. I'm sure we've run in to enough people out there who could handle something like this."

"I doubt any of them have the time to waste."

The pirate's life was a busy one.

"Sure, but if any of them did have the time it'd be a nice gesture." Kane set down his coffee cup and stood up from the stool. "Well, I guess it's time to go have a look at my charming little students' skills."

"Homeroom teacher, club advisor. You’re sure taking this job seriously."

"I take every job seriously." Kane laughed and started shrugging back into his jacket. "You never know when it's going to pay off. The captain used to say that."

"True, but if you're going to pretend to be a teacher, at least straighten your tie."

Misa pointed at the sloppy, loosened knot hanging at Kane's throat.

"Ugh… I'd forgotten the whole reason I joined the Bentenmaru in the first place was because I couldn't stand dressing like this."

He finished slipping his arms through his jacket sleeves, tightened his tie, and exited the exam room.

The long-established home of the Hakuoh Girls' Academy yacht club was located on the third floor of the baroque-patterned main school building. Kane made his way down the hallway—without the uniformed schoolgirls, it wouldn't have looked out of place in a state palace or classically-inspired resort hotel—and knocked on the wooden door to the club room. It was decorated with a relief of an ancient ocean-going yacht.

"Excuse me. This is Kane MacDougal, the club's new advisor."

He set one foot inside and paused, taking in the unexpectedly spacious room.

Larger even than the classrooms, half of the club room was occupied by a meeting space consisting of a circular table surrounded by high-backed chairs. Someone had managed to acquire an old but still high-grade 3D projector and had installed it in the center of the table.

The uniformed club members were gathered in the other half of the room, which was occupied by a large sofa and a low table that looked to have been made from an unworked tree stump. The walls were decorated with models of antiquated sailing vessels, framed star charts, and heavy shelves lined with venerable leather-bound books and astronautical knickknacks, old trophies and heraldries.

"So this is what a high school yacht club looks like?" Kane mumbled, looking at the students. "It's even more fancy than our captain's stateroom."

"Ah! Welcome to the club."

A tall, slender student stepped forward and bowed.

"I'm Jenny Dolittle, the club president. Marika was just telling us that you'll be our new advisor."

Marika stood up from the couch and bowed, a smug look on her face. She jumped right away into the performance that Kane had only then realized was coming.

"It’s my understanding that you possess a Class-2 heavy starship license?"

"Huh?"

A starship license certified one to fly a ship within a star system. The qualifications to apply for a license differed from system to system, but a Class-2 license, which also allowed for the transportation of passengers, wasn’t easy to acquire.

Kane wondered what kind of credentials the Bentenmaru's intelligence officer Hyakume had put together for him in order to infiltrate the school as a physics teacher.

"Err, yeah, I guess I do. It should still be valid, I think."

He thought back to several years prior, sitting the test using a fake identity as part of a job that involved infiltrating a passenger liner operator, wondering what he would ever use it for. He'd forgotten that he'd even taken the test, and obviously he had never needed to check the results.

"That's fantastic!" Jenny said, clapping her hands together. Kane was taken aback as he watched the rest of the students being to applaud. "As best we can tell, the last time the yacht club had an advisor with a captain's license was nearly twenty years ago. This is remarkable!"

"Wh-what is? What's remarkable?"

"We've never had a teacher with a captain's license before. And a Class-2 license is so difficult to get, I've heard you need at least two years of practical experience?"

"Yeah, I mean, it’s related to my primary field of study, so…"

Kane made excuses for himself while trying to remember what exactly his resume had said. According to the cursory look he had given it the morning before, he was supposed to have graduated from the prestigious Stampede University, then joined one of the school's survey vessels as an astrophysics researcher, where he also spent some of his time teaching.

"Damn it Hyakume, you just had to go the extra mile."

"We were just saying, that with you as our advisor, we might be able to take our training ship, the Odette II, on a flight."

"Huh?" Kane's sigh transformed into a question. "You have your own training ship?"

"Here."

Jenny led Kane past the meeting table. Amid the collection of scale models decorating a shelf on the wall opposite the window, she pointed out a noticeably larger model of an older solar sailer starship, painted a vibrant white.

Although Kane could identify most starships by sight, he didn’t recognize this one. He assumed it was a caricature patterned on a real vessel, and examined the model's stand to find out the details of its hull.

The only inscriptions on the rocky base were a name—the Odette II—the year it was built, and some basic information. Knowing that it was the length of a typical cruiser and that it had a relatively low displacement weren't much help in discerning its capabilities.

It was hard to say how much the model resembled the actual ship, but the engine did not take up much of its bulk. The thin body gave the impression of speed, thought it didn't appear to be blessed with much in the way of cabin space.

"Hold up, this is your training ship?"

He realized that the thin, folding antenna masts that followed along the length of the ship were clearly designed for serious electronic warfare use.

"And it's a solar sailer!?"

"We are a yacht club, after all."

Marika poked her head out from behind the club president.

"Everyone was just saying, since you've got a starship license, for our summer training camp we could go on a real voyage, instead of just flying around the way station in dinghies."

"I may have a license…" Kane chose his words carefully, trying to absolve himself of responsibility. "But I'm a teacher, I don't have much experience as a captain. Plus that ship's propulsion and nav equipment are different from a research ship or a freighter, I can't say if I'd even know how to fly it."

"The only thing we need is a captain!"

Marika brought her hands together in front of her chest.

"With a qualified captain, we can finally take the Odette II out of dock and into space.”

"I mean, sure, as long as you’ve got a qualified captain nobody’s going to stop you from trying to launch, but it's a solar sailer…"

Kane took another look at the ship inside the glass case.

He knew the basics of sailing, using collectors that harnessed sunlight and cosmic rays to propel a ship. Solar sailers—ships capable of accelerating without using a propellant—were slower than modern faster-than-light ships, and they couldn't fly beyond the range of a single star system. They weren't in much use anymore.

There were examples of them still being used today in situations where time wasn't a factor—unmanned ore freighters, simple orbital probes—but Kane had never set eyes on an actual functioning solar sailer.

"It's not like I've ever piloted a solar sailer, let alone one of this size…"

"Piloting it will be our job," Jenny boasted. "It's not like an old age-of-sail ship, where you needed manpower to raise and lower the sails. All you need to do is point the sail to where it will absorb the most light, and everyone in the yacht club is trained in how to do that."

"What would a girls' yacht club see in a solar sailer?"

"Because it's there," Marika answered to Kane's offhanded comment, and took a step toward him. "Sure a cruise ship would be more fun, or a pirate ship or any kind of ship, but the Odette II has been right there in front of us, ever since middle school."

"So you don't care, just as long as it's a starship…"

Kane sighed and looked out across the faces of the students in the club room.

"Fine. But I don't know anything about this Odette II. I don't even know how a solar sailer catches the solar wind, or how to position the sails. So I'll want to read up on the ship first. Miss Dolittle, where can I find information on the Odette II?"

"The school's database has all the records on it since its construction. If you're looking for hard copies, the document room has blueprints and the original logs."

"I'll check those if the database isn't sufficient."

Paper blueprints of a starship could likely take up several shipping containers' worth of space.

"We'll need to discuss how to fly the ship, and what kind of plans and preparations we'll need to make for a training voyage. And in order to do that," he said, looking out again at the room full of students, "I'll need to memorize all of your names and faces. Miss club president, could you introduce me to everyone?"

"But of course. I'm the club president, Jenny Dolittle, a senior. This is the vice president, Lynn Lambretta."

Several of the students in their last year were missing, preparing for entrance exams for the universities that they planned to attend, but six of them were still present. Eight second-year students made up the core of the club, as well as ten freshman, including Marika.

Lastly, Marika dragged Chiaki away from the corner where she had been waiting quietly.

"In addition to our new teacher, we also have a new club member joining us today, Chiaki Kurihara!"

"Hey! Don’t manhandle me like we're friends!"

Wriggling the arm of her jacket free from Marika's grasp, Chiaki stood in front of Kane.

"My name is Chiaki Kurihara. I hope I'll make a good addition to the club."

"It’s my first day too, so you're all new faces to me."

Kane tried to read any intention in her eyes. Chiaki simply bowed and retreated.

"So, what did you have planned for today?"

"Our last advisor, Mr. Kipling, put together a series of simulator programs for us to work through this semester," Jenny explained casually, without opening her file. "He said that the first- and second-years could move on to other training once they completed the simulations. Last week the seniors were learning the regulations regarding creating and filing flight plans."

"Sounds very hands-on."

There were certain formalities and procedures that needed to be followed in order to legally fly a starship. It didn't matter if you were a private ship or a military vessel, during peacetime you were expected to adhere to naval statutes; it certainly wouldn’t hurt for them to learn the necessary procedures.

"All right then, how about the first- and second-years finish up their simulator programs from last week, while the seniors start working on a flight plan for a short voyage in the Odette II?"

Creating a flight plan was an automated process, a simple matter of plugging in the necessary data to a fixed form.

"That’s simple, isn’t it?"

Kane nodded in answer to Jenny’s question.

"Right, creating one is simple. But your ship’s been sitting in a dock for the past twenty years. What state is it in? What upgrades do you need to make? How much food and provisions do you need, and where are you going to get them? Can any of you answer all those questions?"

Kane listed every pre-flight preparation he could think of, then looked at the faces of the students.

"You need more than a flight plan to fly a ship. Since this club seems to be oriented towards practical work, maybe it would be a good idea to prepare a manual describing everything you'll need for a real flight."

The seniors and their newfound responsibilities earned joking, jealous cries from the underclassmen. The third-year students, meanwhile, were frozen, staring at one another. Kane turned to the first- and second-year students.

"The rest of you can help them once you've completed your simulations. Prepping a ship is hard work, they're not going to finish it all today."

Kane turned to the petrified seniors. Not one of them looked like they knew what they should be doing.

"First, we need to assess the current state of the Odette II. It’s an actively registered ship on the station, so there should already be a real-time data monitor set up. As the ship's owners, the school needs to have easy access to information regarding the ship without having to travel all the way to the station."

Kane stared at the seniors' confused faces.

"You don't have one?"

Several of them nodded, and Jenny spoke up.

"The school has always handled the management of the ship through an on-station intermediary. We've been there many times to train on the Odette II in dock, but we've never monitored the ship from here."

"I guess even a hands-on program has its limits," Kane said, and clapped his hands together. "Fine then, this should be some good experience. Does the club room have a net connection?"

"Of course it does."

"Then you should be able to open up a channel to the station. If you need help setting it up, ask me. Let's get to work. First- and second-years, off to the simulator room!" Kane barked out. "Get to it! The quicker you finish your training, the sooner you can help out here."

The first- and second-year students made their way as a group to the simulator room on the lower floor.

Marika slipped over towards Kane.

"Um, do you have a moment?"

"You’ve got work today?" he asked, skipping ahead to the point.

"I do. I always try to get the simulations done quickly so I can leave early, but working on launch prep seems like it'd be fun too."

"I doubt the preparations will be finished today," he said, maintaining his teacher's tone. "There's no one right answer in situations like this. It's up to you how you choose to prioritize your work and your club activities."

"You sound like a real teacher."

"I am a real teacher, now."

He tilted his head down at her, somber.

"You can help prep for launch, or you can go to work. Either way, you'd best get moving."

"You’re right."

Marika hadn't been expecting to receive any actual guidance from Kane. She gave a quick bow and took off, chasing after the rest of the students already on their way to the simulators.

The simulators furnished by Hakuoh Academy were equipped with a gravity/inertia system—excessive, really, for a school without a pilot training program. Kane methodically booted up the meeting table's electronics and called over Jenny.

"Does someone need to oversee the simulator training?"

"If need be, the simulators can all be observed from the control room," she answered, accessing the controls built into the table. "But they all know what it is they need to be doing. They shouldn't have any trouble loading the programs and completing them one their own."

"Trainees who can set up their own simulators, that must be convenient," Kane said. "But what about the new transfer student?" he realized.

"Oh!"

Jenny's hands stopped as she was reminded of the unexpected turn of events.

"Hopefully one of them will look after her. If not she can learn by watching them, and if she needs anything she can always come back here."

Kane recalled Marika trailing behind after the rest of her classmates.

"Wonder if our girl’s up to the task?"

The simulator room was located in the basement of the school building, to ensure as stable an operating environment as possible.

The state-of-the-art simulators fixed to the floor wouldn't have been out of place at a pilot training school. Each had its own gravity/inertia system that allowed the trainee to experience the feeling of gravity and acceleration, recreating the experience of actual flight.

Marika arrived at the room which held eighteen of the yacht club's thirty-six simulators, solo models arraigned in three rows of six. Most of the capsules embedded in the floor were already illuminated, indicating that they were already in operation.

"Ah, I'm late!"

Marika bolted towards one simulator with its door opened invitingly, but caught herself, flustered, when she noticed that someone was already inside.

"Sorry. I thought that since the door was open…oh!"

Chiaki, the transfer student, looked up at her from the seat, her harness still unfastened.

"I'm the one who should apologize. I still haven't figured out how to set the door to 'armed.'"

"Uh, um…" Marika looked around the inside of the simulator. There were panels full of lights, some lit and others not. "Is this your first time with this type of simulator?"

"It's a Yasamitsu Discus-4, right? I recognize the name, at least."

"It's easy for me since we've drilled on these since middle school, but I guess it can be complicated for someone who's not used to it. Wait a second and I'll help you boot it up."

"That's okay, you don't—"

She ignored Chiaki while she reached for the heads-up console's handles and poked her head inside the familiar, control panel-filled simulator. Chiaki hurriedly slid her seat back, making room for Marika as she filled up the space in front of her.

"First you hit the main switches, then the sub switches—hey, you already got pretty far."

Nimbly alternating handholds to support herself, Marika reached towards the simulator's sub switches and turned them on one after the other.

"It would be better if they grouped them together, but this system puts the main switches and sub switches in different places. I guess it's because they're like that on the real thing, and they wanted to keep everything the same. There, now your main system is booted up."

After confirming that all of the subsystems' switches were turned on, Marika shifted handholds again.

"Hold on, let me grab the yoke."

She watched the main display's startup screen appear and grabbed the offset joystick cluttered with switches and buttons.

"Today's lesson is to reach orbit and dock at the station."

Marika aligned the cursor with the lessons their advisor had prepared for them at the start of the semester and turned around to face Chiaki. She stared into her dark eyes, taken aback by their unexpected proximity to each other.

"I can't just jump right in though, can I?"

"It may be your first time in a Discus-4, but you're still just piloting a standard dinghy. You'll be fine."

"But our teacher has the settings turned up so much higher than is necessary. Isn't that a little cruel?"

Marika manipulated the control stick in an attempt to bring up the settings for that day's lesson.

"Um, can you reach the left rudder pedal?"

"Just a second." Chiaki slid down in her seat, thankful that she hadn't yet fastened the seat belt, and stretched her left foot towards the pedal. "I've got it."

"Press it when I say so, okay? Ready, now!"

Marika recalled the auxiliary command that she needed to enter on the side panel, borrowing the use of Chiaki's foot when the stick alone wasn't sufficient. She shifted her weight away from her left hand and quickly entered the necessary code, manipulating the stick with her right.

"Wah!"

It was only a matter of time before Marika lost her balance, and she tumbled over onto Chiaki, who was splayed out in the seat below her. A stark whistle signaled the start of the training program.

Chiaki, who was still stretched out on her back, glared at Marika.

"You're heavy."

"I, I'm so sorry!" Marika climbed out of the seat, pulling herself up using the various handholds around the consoles and panels. "Will you be okay from here?"

Chiaki watched Marika expressionlessly while she sat up and pulled her seat forward. She looked around at the control panels surrounding her.

"I can always load up the manual, I think I'll be fine."

"Good, great, I'll see you later."

Marika crawled out of the simulator with a wave and a forced smile. Chiaki apparently finally found the "close" switch, and the hatch began to slide shut.

"She's just another girl, why did I have to get all flustered like that?" Marika mumbled to herself, heading towards a neighboring simulator with an open door. "I was just trying to help. She didn't have to be like that."

She first checked to make sure that this simulator wasn't occupied, then slipped into the seat and slid it forward into operating position. She familiarly flipped all of the main and sub switches and booted up the system.

Marika pulled the safety harness from behind the headrest and began to fasten it while she watched the simulator start.

"I wonder if she'll be okay, diving right into a lesson like that."

The school's simulator system, with its focus on realism, consisted of multiple simulators operating in tandem with each other. Once the launch preparations were complete, she would be able to observe her cohort’s simulators in real time.

Marika selected the training program and brought up the details on her one-seater dinghy as it was hurled into space.

She confirmed her position like always by staring down at Umi-no-ake below her while reading her trajectory and coordinates off the display. According to the data transmitted to her by the way station and navigational satellites, there were eighteen one-seater dinghies like hers in orbit at various points around the planet.

She searched the eighteen ships for number 17, Chiaki's simulator, and quickly located it. It seemed that she was still in her original position, and was adjusting her craft’s facing in preparation for changing her orbit.

"I guess I have to play catchup."

Marika confirmed the way station's coordinates and her orbital parameters. In addition to increasing her altitude and altering her orbital plane, she would also need to make her approach to the station without interfering with other traffic.

The target was Hakuoh Academy's private berth on the station, dock C68. Although the role of traffic control was being played by the central computer rather than real station controllers, the surrounding space was recreated as close as possible to current conditions, so she needed to stay conscious of her surroundings.

"All I’ve got to do is fly there. It shouldn't be that hard."

The situation in orbit around Umi-no-ake wasn’t particularly hectic at the moment—only a few freighters and government ships. The bare minimum Marika needed to do was choose a path that wouldn't earn her a warning from traffic control. She visualized the paths of ships that seemed likely to approach or intersect her orbit and began searching for the most effective course to take.

Frustratingly, they had been unable to establish a direct connection between the station and the club room.

After a quick investigation, Kane found that the school was the registered owner of the Odette II, and that there already was a link between the station and the school, but that it was connected to the faculty office and restricted to faculty use. The club room had no access to the feed from either their private dock or from the Odette II itself.

Kane returned to the faculty office and, using the administrator privileges granted to him as a teacher, reset the data feed, all the while worrying about how much leeway the hidebound school would actually give him. He made sure that any connections made from the club room couldn't interfere with or alter the state of the ship before heading back.

The third-year students were surprised at how quickly their new teacher was able to update the network; they cheered when the meeting table's computer was able to easily connect to the station.

"That's amazing! I had no idea linking up would be that easy."

"Actually, uh…"

Kane, who always favored the most expedient solution for the sake of time, tried to come up with some excuse.

"I'm sure someone had planned on using the club room as a control room at some point. Most of the time people simply use the default settings, so I just went and changed it to connect to here instead. Was it really that quick?"

"You act like it was easy, but even a specialist can take days to set up a connection. We didn't think you'd be back before we had to leave the school."

Jenny glanced at the holographic display in the center of the table, projecting an image of dock C68 and the elegant lines of the Odette II.

"You managed this like it was nothing. Are you really a teacher?"

"I did tell you this is my first time teaching high school."

It wasn’t a lie.

"Now then, I want you all to read the manual, figure out how to use the system, and assess the current state of the Odette II. Just to be safe, I have things set so you can't do anything too reckless. Don't worry that you'll accidentally launch the ship or blow it up."

Kane waved to the giggling girls schoolgirls as he turned his back to the table.

"I'm going to go be a proper advisor and see how the simulator training is going. I'll be right back."

One day earlier he had needed to hack into the system from the physics lab in order to monitor the simulator room; today he could simply watch from the control room. Located on the same floor as the simulators, he entered and sat down in front of the central computer's primary monitor, flipping the switches on the displays that surrounded him.

"This may just be some girls' high school, but this system wouldn't look out of place in a military HQ."

The primary monitor was circled by a cluster of high definition holographic displays. The details of the day's lesson were listed one one of the closer displays; Kane reviewed them and was again surprised.

"Transitioning from a low orbit and docking with the station; practical as always. But with these parameters there'll be no room for shortcuts like yesterday."

He overlaid the simulated dinghies on the real-time orbital map and brought up the data on each of them one by one.

"She's number 18, so 17's probably the new girl."

Dinghy number 18 had only made adjustments to its inclination, but it was yet to move from its starting position—was she still trying to plot her approach vector? Number 17 also hadn't made any noticeable changes to its orbit.

"The rest of the dinghies seem to have stabilized their orbits. It doesn't look like any of them messed up and jumped the gun though."

As Kane scrolled through the panel, checking the navigational data for each dinghy, he noticed something unusual.

"What's this? Was this program running yesterday?"

He was ever vigilant for irregular network activities, on account of his line of work. A suspicious external program was active that hadn't been running the day before.

He considered using the main computer to try and determine its true nature, but after realizing that it may be the work of another, unknown party, he pulled a small electronic tablet from the breast pocket of his suit. On the surface it appeared to be a crude, two-generations-old computer, but its insides were packed with illegal parts and pirate ingenuity that the original hardware could never have matched.

Leaving the simulation running on the main computer, Kane booted up the small tablet and pulled out a connector cable. He plugged the universal connector into the control panel of the main computer and switched over to stealth mode before it could recognize him.

His optimized, military-grade application instantly analyzed the main system and its security framework, showing a realtime, moment-by-moment update of its status on the tiny multi-purpose display.

"Aha, an illegal backdoor, eh?"

Kane set the tablet down on the control panel and switched its display from flat to three-dimensional. An image of the system and the illicit program coalesced above the tablet's flat display, red points of light resembling a many-legged spider.

"So, how'd you get in here?"

Watching the backdoor carefully to avoid detection, Kane determined that it was under somebody's control, rather than a virus that had propagated automatically. The Hakuoh Girls' Academy's network had tight security handled by a skilled professional; infiltrating it would require equal skill and effort.

Locating the source of the infection was simple. Kane sighed when he discovered the hacker's true identity.

"Simulator number 17. The new girl? But why make it so easy?"

The control room's main monitor was ringed with shots of the eighteen individual dinghies engaged in the simulation. Entering through simulator number 17, the hacker had already penetrated the system’s core. What kind of equipment was she using?

"Hacking the system during flight training. I knew she wasn't a normal transfer student, but still, that’s impressive."

He could tell from watching the smooth operation of the dinghy's rudder that she was no amateur. It wouldn't be difficult for someone with the right knowledge and skills to hack the system through one of the simulators.

"So, new girl, what are up to, worming your way this deep inside?"

With an authentic educator’s zeal to uncover and stamp out cheaters, Kane found himself curious as to why she would want to hack the simulator.

"For better marks? Doesn't seem like it."

It was possible that she didn't fully understand the system, but the dinghy's movements were too on-point.

"Maybe you're trying to mess with our girl?"

As far as he could tell from the tablet's display, it appeared that the attacker's first objective was to take control of the system. She wasn't having an easy time of it.

It was possible that she lacked the skills, or that her tools weren't up to the job, or maybe she was being careful not to leave behind any trace. Infiltrating a system without tripping the security and getting booted would be slow and painstaking.

"I can't figure out what she's up to…”

Were he to activate the camera inside the simulator, she'd know she was being watched. There were ways to capture images from the camera without turning on the activation light, of course, but one careless command could still draw the hacker's attention.

Still curious about what skills and equipment the new girl possessed, he switched his focus to the activities of the rest of the craft.

Several of the dinghies had begun entering a higher orbit to match that of the station. Number 18, Marika's, the last of the craft to launch, had the surface of both wing-sails at full tilt facing the midday surface of the planet, taking in the sunlight like a yacht while she increased her speed.

"Accelerating with her sails and drives in tandem. Impressive, though it'll make manual low-speed course adjustments more difficult."

Number 17, Chiaki's craft, also started to climb. It was an efficient, by-the-book trajectory, using only a minimal amount of sail power. While their disparate starting positions made it impossible to draw any direct comparison, at this rate the gap between number 17 and number 18 would only grow.

"If she cheats, she could overtake Marika or get in the way of her flight path."

Kane checked the status of the infiltration of the main computer on his tablet's display. It seemed it would be some time before the system was completely taken over, likely due to the circuitous methods she was using to avoid the security.

His eyes glanced at the clock in the corner of the display.

"I wonder if she'll finish before the school closes."

Kane activated his tablet's recorder function so he could track the hacker's progress and switched off the three-dimensional display. He disconnected the cord from the device, leaving the other end attached to the main computer, and ensured that it was transmitting over wireless before returning it to his pocket.

"Hope you have fun."

He stood up from his seat but left the monitor on; it would be some time before the students' scores were posted.

When Kane returned to the club room, he was greeted by flashing red warnings.

"What happened? What did you do?"

"Sorry. I think we might have made a minor miscalculation."

The high definition holographic display was dotted with warning lights, a red, blinking spectacle. Jenny hovered over the meeting table, awash in flashing red.

"I see. Can you tell me exactly how all this mess started?"

"We were trying to transfer control of the Odette II to here, when somehow all this just happened," Lynn Lambretta, the club's vice president, explained, as her fingers darted across the controls.

"Uh-huh."

Kane sat down at one of the table's open seats, surmising based on their own admission what the club members had done. He dealt with each of the alerts one by one, eventually putting the wailing sirens to rest.

"You were trying to take control of the ship? From here?"

"Yes, but it was either sluggish or there wasn't enough bandwidth, and it wouldn't respond, so I tried a bunch of stuff and then the alarms starting going off."

"You tried to take remote control of a docked ship without warning. If you don't go through the proper steps, of course it's going to set of an alarm."

Kane called up the log of recent activity, including any erased data, to see what the club members had done.

"Is one of this club's rules trying to exploit whatever gaps you can find?" he muttered. His privileges as a teacher at the school were insufficient—he needed to login as the ship's owner and custodian in order to cancel the alert. As he had suspected, the station's staff had sent a form letter inquiring as to what had happened.

"This might be even more severe than whatever that transfer student is up to. This club has some serious talent."

As the club room transitioned from crisis mode back to normal, Kane was suddenly struck by an unnerving presence and turned around.

"Wah!"

At some point the club members who had earlier been scattered around the table had all gathered behind him, peeking at the display and the controls from every angle that they could manage.

"W-what is it?"

"That was amazing!"

Jenny clasped both hands to her chest with a sigh.

"All of us working together couldn't do anything, but you handled it all by yourself."

Lynn gave Kane a curious stare while the rest of the club applauded.

"Are you really a teacher?"

"I'll cut you some slack, at least for today." He stared intently at the faces of the third-year students circled around him. "Now, everyone, get back to your seats. You're supposed to be assessing the status of the Odette II and drafting a plan for provisions, not to trying to take control of an un-prepped ship from the ground. You should be able to inspect the docked ship through the feed from its berth, without needing to connect to the ship itself. Do any of you know the proper way to do that?”

The students stared at each other across the table. Kane decided to rephrase the question.

"It doesn't need to be perfect. Anyone?"

More than half of them quickly raised their hands.

"Excellent. I don’t care where you learned it, but there’s a lot of talent here. Try to access a ship without going through the proper steps and you'll set off a bunch of warnings—like what happened just now. Even worse, you could get the authorities after you. To make sure that doesn't happen, today we're going to learn the proper procedure for accessing a ship."

"Yes sir."

As the third-year students answered him in unison, Kane quietly berated himself.

"A pirate has no place teaching a bunch of civilians about proper naval protocol."

With Kane's guidance, it was a simple matter for the students to master how to access the data from the ship and its berth. He carefully jotted down a precise guide on the steps necessary to contact the station, before leaving to check on the progress of the simulators.

He pulled the electronic tablet from his suit pocket as he walked down the hallway. While the screen was only capable of displaying a fraction of the data, it was enough for him to tell what was happening.

"She still hasn't taken over the system."

The simulator's computer was still in control; its security must have been extremely tight. All of the dinghies were making their expected progress in the simulated flight space. Several of them had matched orbits with the station, and as he had predicted the first craft to request clearance to dock had been number 18, Marika.

"All that fuss over nothing. At this rate she'll still be out of here before she has to be at work."

Kane returned to the control room, but nothing had changed. When he played back the recording on the monitor, he saw that not only had the solar rays harnessed by Marika's sails pushed her propulsion to its maximum, but that she had also traveled on her sails as close to the station as she possibly could have before she would have received an infraction.

On the other hand, number 17 had also transferred to a higher orbit using her drives and sails in tandem, but compared to the rest of the craft she was in the middle of the pack, and the distance between her and number 18 had only grown.

"Not as bad as I'd expect from someone trying to hack and fly at the same time, but she's still got her work cut out for her."

Kane brought up the navigational data for dinghy number 18.

"Impressive. Those craft are built like competition yachts, but she’s still outflying the cargo ships up there. What kind of magic is she using?"

As the recording of her orbital transfer streamed across the display, Kane murmured approvingly.

"Could she really get this much speed with just a hasty transition and optimal sail use?"

A single orbit immediately after launching would take a dinghy about one hundred minutes; that meant fifty minutes on the nighttime side of the planet, without the benefit of the solar radiation. Apparently unsatisfied with this, Marika must have forced her craft into a polar orbit. perpendicular to the ecliptic plane, putting her in a position to receive constant sunlight and increase her altitude in a single push.

Although her initial change in orbit caused her to overuse her propellant—this time they had it in abundance—at full sail and with constant exposure to the sunlight she could climb as high as she wished.

With its transfer orbit clearly too fast to intersect with the station, and without enough fuel to decelerate, dinghy number 18 made a sudden turn and alteration to its facing. The ninety degree change in the angle of its sails caused the sunlight that had been propelling it to instead slow it, the craft’s remaining thrust being used to adjust its course.

"So, she’s still got some tricks up her sleeve."

But as the yacht began its final approach to the station's dock at full sail, there was an increased likelihood that it would run afoul of another ship, or that it would be thrown off-balance by the drives of passing ships. Few modern stations allowed yachts to operate on sails in their vicinity.

Fortunately, however, this simulation wasn't bound by such restrictions, and the dinghy was free to use its sails to kill its excess velocity as it closed with the station.

Marika approached with full sails closer than she would ever have been allowed to in reality, neatly folding them closed only at the last moment. She entered the airtight dock C68 without any need to use her thrusters to adjust her attitude.

"She puts on a tough act to follow."

It was hard to believe that such a smooth landing was taking place in a high school training simulator. Kane checked the positions of the rest of the dinghies. Two had received clearance from the station and were already approaching, while the rest were still making their transfer orbits.

"Docking complete, craft halted, landing confirmed!"

The transmission from simulator 18 filled the control room. Kane watched as the dinghy settled into place, the pier's docking arm moving to hold it stationary .

He grabbed the headset from on top of the console and held it up to his ear.

"This is station control, docking confirmed. Today's lesson will wrap up once your craft is secured."

"K-, Kane!?" Marika squeaked; she must not have expected him to be there. "Where are you? What are doing?"

"I'm in the control room."

His eyes shot to his tablet laying on the console, switched back to its holographic display. The main computer would soon be taken over.

"I came to watch the simulation, as your advisor."

"I'm going to fast-forward through docking confirmation, taxiing, and equalizing pressure with the dock. How are things upstairs?"

"We just managed to establish a connection between the club room and the dock on-station. The way things are going, they probably won't start working on launch prep until tomorrow, I think?"

There was a pause before she responded.

"Really? Got it. Docking complete, ending transmission."

The communication cut as the hatch to the simulator opened, and Marika leapt out. Kane thought he could see her wave at the internal camera, and she rushed to the control room.

"How's the transfer student doing?"

"You can watch the other dinghies while you're flying, can't you?" Kane hurriedly cleared the recording of Marika's flight from the display. "She's still in the middle of her transfer, she might have trouble making it to dock before the end of school."

"Chiaki, she's not one of the Bentenmaru's crew?"

Kane spun his chair around and shook his head, struck by the directness of her question.

"Really?"

Her eyes still carried suspicion.

"Misa and I were both up front with you from the start when we came to see you. We made it clear who we were and what we wanted, why would we need someone else to get close to you in secret?"

"So then who is she?"

Marika looked around at the displays showing not only the simulated dinghies, but actual ships in orbit as well.

"Is that what was on your mind while you were flying?"

Kane switched the tablet's display back to two dimensions.

"I agree. Her transferring in now, and joining the same club as you, it's too convenient to just be a coincidence. But she's not from the Bentenmaru. That I can guarantee."

"Then who is she?"

"That's the question, isn't it? What do you think?"

Marika glanced at Kane. She realized that he was testing her.

"She showed up at the same time as you. What if she's another pirate?"

"Could be. We thought so too, so we had our intelligence people run through her background."

"What did they find?"

"Haven't heard back yet. If she's in the business, then I doubt it will be easy to get a trace on her." Kane peeked over his shoulder at the tablet's display. "So, what about work today?"

"Heading there right now!"

She spun around and started to race out the door, but quickly stopped, her hand gripping the door frame.

"Will you be stopping by tonight?"

"We weren't planning on it." He pointed up, towards the club room. "I've got a lot of homework to do tonight, thanks to all of you. I need to read up on solar sailers."

"Right, see you tomorrow then!"

Marika gave one last bow before she bolted from the control room.

"She’s sure got a lot of energy."

As Kane watched her leave, his tablet gave off an alert. He spun his seat around and switched the display back to holographic mode. He watched as the main computer, now almost completely subverted, bleated out its last warnings just before shutting down.

"What the…?"

According to the data from his tablet, the main computer had entered into an automatic shutdown sequence as a result of a sudden, unidentified overload.

"Sloppy."

The system may have not been able to identify the source of the overload, but it was obvious to Kane, who had been watching from the start, that it was the result of hacking.

"She gets ninety-nine percent of the way there and blows it at the last second."

He held the headset up to his ear and opened a channel to all of the simulators as he tried to think up an explanation.

"This is your advisor, Kane, in the control room. It seems that there's a problem with the computer, so everyone please just sit tight. It should be fixed soon, and the simulation will restart. If not, you can return to the club room and help the seniors."

Accessing the main computer via root access from his tablet, Kane tried to restart the system and avoid having to suspend their training. With the computer’s security system activated, it was in the process of forcibly halting each program.

After a slew of attempts using the standard methods, he gave up on resuming the simulation. With every part of the compromised system reset, even the automated restoration sequence had no choice but to restart the simulation from the beginning.

"It appears that there's no easy way to get the simulation back up and running, so we're going to end today's training here. Everyone, please exit your simulators and head back to the club room where you can help the third-years put together data on the Odette II."

One by one the simulators' hatches opened and the students climbed out, their conversations predictable: "You've got to be kidding me" and "I was just getting to the good part." Kane left the control room and went out to meet them.

"Did it save our progress?"

"Since the crash was unexpected, we won't know whether the data was backed up until the whole system can be restarted," Kane answered. "If everything was deleted, then I guess you'll just have to start over from the beginning."

"No way, I was just about to dock!"

One girl's exaggerations of her own progress were met with skepticism from another student, and they all left the simulator room laughing.

Chiaki was the last to emerge from her simulator.

"You screwed up."

Alone together in the simulator room, Chiaki averted her eyes from Kane.

"If you plan to stay in this line of work, you'd better learn how to play it smart."

Chiaki looked up at Kane in terror, her frame quivering.

"I'm afraid I don't know what it is you're talking about."

Totally transparent, Kane thought, but he bit his tongue.

"I have to go."

"My name is Kane MacDougal. I'm the Bentenmaru's chief pilot," he whispered, just loud enough for Chiaki to hear as she tried to slip past him. She left the simulator room, pretending not to hear him.

"Who dumps a job like this on someone like her?" he mused as he watched her go. "She acted like she didn't hear me, so maybe she already knew? Is she really a pirate? I wish I knew what was going through her head."

"I'm beat…"

Some time after even the students who’d stayed behind past the end of clubs were chased off by the close of the school day, Kane appeared in the physician's office.

"Same."

The office had seen a parade of students once word had spread about the withered witch being replaced by a young bombshell. Misa sat up from the desk where she had been resting her head.

"It's been a while since I had to deal with kids, and there were so many of them too."

She opened the refrigerator for refrigerated medicines that stood against the wall and removed from among the rows of medical cartridges the beer that she had stashed there earlier.

"You want a drink?"

"Doctor's orders?"

Kane caught the can of beer that Misa tossed his way and pushed in the tab while admiring the cheap domestic’s label.

"So how'd it go?"

"With what, the yacht club, or with our girl?"

He quickly drained half the can and took a seat on the exam stool.

"Start with the girl."

"She's more devious than we thought."

"Is that so?"

Misa, can still pressed to her lips, looked surprised.

"When she found out I had a captain's certification and was being assigned as their advisor, she told the club president, and now they making plans to launch the ship the school's got moored up on the station."

"This school has its own ship?" She looked curiously at Kane. "And since when were you qualified to be a captain?"

"I never said I was qualified, just that I had the certification. I remember having to sit the test for some old job. Guess I passed."

"By the way, Hyakume sent us his report."

She turned back to her desk and switched on the display. After entering her password and passing a thumbprint verification, she switched it over to message mode. A string of communiques from their ship scrolled across the screen.

"I'd wondered what he was doing with all that data on such a relic of a ship. There's tons of it."

"That was quick. Let me have a look."

"Be my guest."

Kane swapped places with Misa, dragging his stool over to the desk, and tapped away at the keyboard, opening up the attachments. There was a wealth of data, including videos and blueprints—several times what his small, portable tablet was capable of handling.

"You don't see those kinds of ships much."

"Not these days you don't. It's an old solar sailer."

"Thing looks ancient. Will it still fly?"

"It may be old, but it's registration is up to date, and it's passed its annual safety inspections. It'll still take a lot of work to get it ready, but there shouldn't be any problems taking it for a quick spin around the solar system. But the last time it left the dock was twenty years ago, I wonder if the comms and electronics are still up to spec."

"If it passed inspection then it should be fine, right?"

"Sometimes you can fake it, if you can find converters that'll fit the old parts. I guess I should go take a look for myself, to make sure."

He looked over the ship's equipment list, and then opened the attached log.

"Wow, I knew it was old—it's a solar sailer, after all—but this trash heap has been around for two hundred years. That's even longer than our ship."

"Two hundred years? Impressive. What's it been through?"

"It started out as an experimental, high fuel-efficiency ship, then a freighter, then a surveyor. During the war of independence it was an armed merchant…and a converted cruiser!?" He expanded the list and poked through the data.

"Wait a minute! Back then its name was…the White Swan!?" Kane’s expression changed when he discovered the name the ship had used from its remodeling until the end of the war. "The White Swan. That was one of the 'Original Seven.'"

Misa took a lateral peek at the display.

"I’m familiar with the name too, you know. One of the first seven pirate ships to receive letters of marque from the separatist government."

Umi-no-ake's government had granted several letters of marque concurrent with its declaration of independence from the ruling stars. The Bentenmaru was also one of those first seven ships to be granted a letter of marque.

"They didn’t just issue them to pirate ships, right?"

"The 'converted cruiser' designation might just have been a contrivance of the war, but the White Swan was one of the top three in terms of number of ships captured. How do you capture a freighter using a solar sailer?"

"Maybe we should check out its battle reports?"

"It's not a military ship, do you think they'd keep detailed engagement records?"

As Kane scrolled through the comprehensive ship's history, he noticed a string of entries detailing the overhauls it had gone through.

"According to this, they upgraded the sub-computer, boosted the sensors, and reinforced the frame? And rebuilt the drives?"

It was typical for starships to receive maintenance whenever they put into port, but it seemed that for a time the White Swan had undergone small-scale upgrades every time it docked. Enhanced electronics, starting with the communications and sensors, and ultimately a complete replacement of the main computer with a cutting-edge model, along with a propulsion system overhaul that seemed wholly unnecessary for a solar sailer.

"Aha! So this must have been what they were aiming for."

The details were cleverly concealed, but once Kane knew what to look for, it became clear that the White Swan had been receiving upgrades with the intent of becoming an armed merchant ship since even before the start of the war.

"It may have been a civilian ship before the war, but someone probably intended to acquire a letter of marque and style themselves a pirate."

Misa nodded in agreement, though her face still held hints of suspicion.

"I'd always wondered if this region of space was rife with pirates before the war, not being under the thumb of the Galactic Empire. Looks like pirates weren't the only ones jumping at those letters of marque."

"Even so, you’re slower and less maneuverable than a normal ship, and even if there are ways to raid other ships with a freighter, once your cover’s blown you’re out of luck. After they find out who you are and try to escape, you can't chase them down with such weak drives. It's a wonder they were able to act as pirates at all, let alone for so long."

Kane tried to find the navigation logs. Unfortunately, the documents he had received were mostly maintenance records, schematics, and operation manuals; he couldn't find anything resembling old transit records.

"Apparently they stripped out the weapons after the war, reverted the designation from a converted cruiser back to a freighter, and operated as a transport for a while, before the school got their hands on it and registered it as a training vessel."

He stared in consternation at the ship's more than one hundred year old history.

"Did they really remove the weapons? The upgrade records were meticulous, but everything after the war is so slapdash."

He didn't know where the records had come from, but once they reached the war's end they became much more simple and abbreviated. Even the weapons-related entries from before the war had been carefully edited, and he couldn't tell what kind of armament the White Swan had carried during its time as a converted cruiser.

"I guess they changed the name after the school took over as owner."

"It seems like I'll have to head to the station and investigate for myself."

Kane tapped away at the keyboard and began composing a message.

"Have you got time for that?"

"As long as I'm busy teaching, probably not. But if things go according these girls' plans, I imagine we'll be launching this dilapidated ship soon enough. And if the crew of the Bentenmaru want to stop twiddling their thumbs and get jobs as maintenance people, I can have them check it out for me."

"I guess there's no point in asking anyone from the yacht club?"

"What's that?"

Kane dispatched the message and looked up from the screen.

"Nothing. So you’re going to be accompanying the club on their training run?"

"That's the plan."

Kane copied the data he had been sent over to his tablet and switched off the display.

"And ideally, I'd like to take our girl out into space on a real flight. Seems like the perfect opportunity to see if she's fit to be our captain, don't you think?"

"It doesn't matter if she's fit for the job or not; if she doesn't do it then we all need to start looking for new jobs." Misa drained the last of the beer in her can. "I'm heading out."

"Where to?" Kane asked casually, still holding his beer. Misa had already slipped out of her lab coat.

"Canal Street, Lamp House. Our girl already left for work, didn't she?"

"She sure did. Blazed through her lesson and took off, just like yesterday."

"I doubt anything major will happen—it's a safe planet, and the security around there is tight. But it couldn't hurt to make sure, right?"

"Hadn’t crossed my mind." Kane jumped to his feet and killed the rest of his beer in a single gulp. "Yesterday it was us, this morning it was the transfer student, who knows who's who’ll be after her next?"

"What the…"

Afternoons at Lamp House, which also offered a light selection of food, were never particularly crowded.

"It's not usually this busy, is it?" Mami asked. Marika, uniformed, was heading outside to take an order.

"Yeah, there are a lot of customers."

It was a weekday, outside of tourist season, and still nearly all of the converted brick warehouse cafe's tables—including the outdoor terrace—were full.

"That's what I'm saying!" Mami watched a group of suited businessmen seated at the terrace while she made her way inside carrying a mountain of tea services. "Go see for yourself!"

"Welcome to Lamp House! Can I take your order?"

A group of men stared past their sunglasses at Marika and her clipboard. They were seated under a parasol at one of the round terrace tables, their heavily muscled bodies looking out of place beneath their suits.

Marika caught her surprise in her throat and smiled back at them.

One of the men opened the menu with his black-gloved hand. He pointed at the house blend, and held up four fingers.

"Four of the house blend coffees? And what about the rest of you?" she joked, trying to keep from laughing as she scribbled on the clipboard. "Will that be all? We just got a delicious order of fresh pickles."

No response. Marika realized that all of the men were focused on the nametag that emblazoned her chest.

She took another look at the men—they had to be police or military—and wondered whether she should trade nametags with someone else.

"Okay then, four coffees, coming right up."

She gave a curt bow and retreated. Their gazes drilled into her as she walked away, and she headed back inside.

The interior of the cafe was likewise unusually packed. The usual clientele were sightseers, couples, and local regulars, but today the seats were filled with people who did not look the part of tourists.

Large bodies jutting out from chairs and tables, one after the other, faces hidden behind sunglasses or in the shade of hats. Even so, Marika felt like all of the customers' eyes were trained on her and her alone as she made her way across the floor.

A simple chime rang out as the front door opened.

"Welcome to Lamp House!" the maid-uniformed waitresses chorused, but the couple who had entered shrank from the glares of the patrons who already crowded around every table, and they excused themselves, mumbling.

"Hmm." Marika passed the order across the counter and surveyed the restaurant, still wearing her retail smile. "Is it my imagination, or are we being watched?"

"It's not your imagination!" Mami screamed at her as she loaded a tray with coffee cups. "It's you! They're all staring at you!"

"No way!" Marika turned to Mami with a look of feigned confusion.

"Do they know you?" an older waitress asked, pulling a coffee pot from behind the counter. Marika quickly straightened up, turned toward the counter, and forced a smile.

"I wonder."

"Well I'm glad there are lots of customers and that they're buying something, but now thanks to them no one else can get in."

“Um…"

Marika turned her back to the room and slipped behind the counter while she tried to make up an excuse.

She could feel everyone's eyes following her.

"I mean, I can't think of any reason why I'd have suddenly gained so many fans."

The tinny bell chimed as the front door swung open.

"Welcome to Lamp House!"

Marika turned reflexively towards the entrance and greeted with the familiar uniform of Hakuoh Girls' Academy.

"Huh?"

Like the previous customers, the slender figure met with the oppressive stares of the men who filled the restaurant. She took a quick glance around the room and briskly made her way over to the counter.

"Chiaki?"

Chiaki walked straight to an empty counter seat, placed her bag in the seat next to it, and promptly sat herself down. She looked Marika up and down.

"Are you oblivious?"

"Excuse me?"

"Terrace table’s coffee’s up!"

The older waitress placed a tray holding four cups and a coffee pot on the counter. It was customary at Lamp House for drinks to be poured at the table.

"I'll be right there! Ah, Mami, could you take Chiaki-chan's order?"

"Chiaki-chan!?"

Her eyebrows bristled at Marika's sudden use of the diminutive.

"Welcome to Lamp Hou—wait, new girl?" Mami looked the lone counter customer in the face. "Are you one of them too?" she asked, taking a clandestine look around the restaurant. Chiaki boldly shook her head.

"Of course I'm not! Why would you think that?"

"No reason." She handed Chiaki a menu. "Welcome to Lamp House. Today's special is pickles fresh from Nanki, they go great with some plum kelp tea."

Chiaki flipped through the menu, stopping on a certain page page.

"Chocolate parfait…?" she started to say, then raised her head and looked around the restaurant. All of the customers' eyes were following Marika while she carried the coffee service-laden tray across the room.

121

"Err, I'll have a coffee."

"Our parfaits come highly recommended, you know?" Mami whispered, slipping into her sales pitch. "So much better than boring old coffee."

"Fine then, a chocolate parfait," Chiaki said with resignation, and closed the menu. Mami jotted the order down on her clipboard.

"Right. One chocolate parfait," Mami relayed to the waitress behind the counter.

"That'll be right up. Finally, something other than coffee."

"Marika, mission complete!" Marika announced as she returned from serving the terrace guests their coffee, serving tray in her left hand and coffee pot in her right, the whole of the restaurant watching her. As she arrived at the counter she spun to face the room and gave a gentle curtsy.

Gazes shot everywhere. Chiaki, who was monitoring the restaurant out of the corner of her eye, sighed.

"What do you think you're doing?"

Marika replaced the empty coffee pot counter-side.

"If they’re gonna stare, I might as well give them a little show," she whispered to Chiaki, quietly enough not to be overheard. She turned her back to the room. "Is club finished?"

"The simulator crashed, so there was nothing left to do," Chiaki reported truthfully, but with a sour look on her face. "Anyway, what are you doing working in a place like this!?"

"It's my job."

"Don't you realize who you are?"

"I'm just a high schooler."

"Are you serious?"

"Am I wrong?"

"You're the Bentenmaru's next captain!"

Marika stared blankly at Chiaki.

"You’re awfully well-informed."

"You have no idea what it means to be a pirate, do you?"

Marika held back all the questions she wanted to ask, and simply shook her head.

"If you did, you wouldn't be so calm waiting on these people."

Marika pulled another coffee pot from behind the counter and headed back out to the restaurant floor. Brazen stares scattered about the room like baby spiders.

Marika visited each table she thought might be in need of refills, but most had barely touched their drinks. She shrugged her shoulders.

"It felt like there were more customers than usual, but who are they?"

Chiaki gave an exasperated huff.

"The far table is probably military intelligence, the round table in the center are riot cops, and the goons on the terrace are defense force special forces. I think those guys over there with the shifty eyes might be a squad from the local mafia."

"What!?"

Marika looked around the restaurant, still clueless.

"Are they friends of yours?"

"Of course not!"

"You can tell them apart just by looking at them."

"The look, the smell, the demeanor, they're all completely different! The intel guys are all plain-looking, the special forces are nothing but meatheads, the police are completely kitted out, and the mafia just have that look to them, you know?"

Marika gave the room another look, her retail smile beaming. The customers at each table discreetly averted their eyes. She could tell that they looked nothing like tourists or families or couples on dates, but she couldn't discern anything else about them.

"Here you go, one chocolate parfait."

The waitress behind the counter set a large glass piled with ice cream and chocolate in front of Chiaki. It was followed by a parfait spoon and a straw, placed on top of a paper napkin.

"Uh, thank you."

"What are people like that coming to Lamp House for?"

"Are you serious?" Chiaki faced forward while she prodded at her parfait. "They came her to see you…wow, this is really good."

"I know, right?" Marika said cheerfully, peeking at Chiaki's face from the side. "Everyone at school loves ‘em."

Chiaki took three more bites in succession before glaring at Marika. "Don't think this means you've won," she said, still gripping her spoon.

"I thought nothing of the sort!"

Marika clutched the serving tray to her chest and vigorously shook her head.

"So they really came here just to look at me?" She took another look around the restaurant and then peeked back at Chiaki. "Did you come here to look at me too?"

The clattering of the spoon against the sides of the glass stopped. Chiaki, spoon in mouth, shot a sideways glance at Marika with eyes that seemed like they would shoot laser beams.

The front door of the restaurant swung open, accompanied by the gentle chime of the bell.

"Welcome to Lamp House!" the waitresses chorused as they turned to face the entrance. They were greeted with the sight of a police officer, his face shrouded by his policeman’s cap.

"Huh?"

The young officer hesitated as he entered the converted brick warehouse cafe; it was as if he were being repelled by the shady customers who currently occupied the restaurant. He took a look around the restaurant, spotted Marika in her maid outfit next to the single customer at the counter, and walked directly towards her.

"Just one today?"

"You must be Katou Marika."

The officer, his features hidden behind his sunglasses and cap, flashed his badge at her with his left hand; it bore in relief the mark of the city police department. She stared at the officer, surprised that he would call her out by name.

"I am."

"Please come with me. There's been an emergency involving a family member."

"Ririka?"

She looked questioningly at the officer. She expected she'd have been contacted directly in the event of an emergency, but her phone was currently in the pocket of her backpack, inside the changing room.

"There's been an incident on the station," the officer said. "Your family member listed you as their emergency contact. You'll be safe with us, so please come with me."

"Impostor," Chiaki whispered, jamming the spoon back into her parfait. "What's a traffic cop doing trying to locate someone’s emergency contact?"

Without thinking, Marika took another look at the officer's uniform and noticed that he was gripping a tiny palm gun in his right hand. A real police officer wouldn't have reason to carry a concealed weapon.

"Hurry up, follow me."

"Don't go," Chiaki said, this time loud enough that the officer would hear. He turned his palm gun on her, but what he saw next left him in disbelief.

She had drawn a large-caliber pistol the size of a pocket flashlight from somewhere and, hidden between her body and the counter, was pointing it at the officer.

"Chiaki, wait! What's that in your hand!?"

"I think you know."

"It's nothing but a flare gun," the officer answered.

"That's right." Chiaki's slender hands raised the large-bored pistol towards the officer, unflinching. "It's a flare gun. One bright enough to see even from orbit. Do you know what will happen if I fire it in here?"

"You wouldn't dare."

"You wanna try me?"

Chiaki, the parfait spoon dangling from her mouth, covered one ear with her free right hand. Marika instinctively shut her eyes and clamped both hands down over her own ears.

Even with her eyes shut Marika recognized the flash as it singed her eyes. She felt the shockwave of compressed air as she huddled crouched to the floor.

"Follow me!"

Even after opening her eyes the seared afterimage left her unable to see clearly. The restaurant was full of shouting and explosions, coughing and the sounds of beams being fired. Chiaki slipped behind the counter, through the door to the kitchen, and hurried towards the exit.

"Wait! Chiaki! What did you do?"

"You were there, weren't you? I launched a flare."

"Inside the restaurant!?"

"Don't worry, it was an old cartridge, no stronger than a flashbang."

Marika zigzagged through the kitchen, the hand on her wrist dragging her outside. She blinked in the wind and shook her head.

"My eyes are still messed up. Is everyone else okay?"

"The other waitresses will be fine, they weren't looking at us. The customers on the other hand…"

As they headed down the alleyway opposite the canal, Chiaki turned back to watch the warehouse that Lamp House occupied. Beams were flying from the outdoor terrace, unmistakable coupled with their distinctive sound.

"What a lively bunch."

"What's going on!?" Marika's vision had finally returned, and she shook off Chiaki's hand and halted in her tracks. "Why'd you do that!?"

Chiaki let out a heavy sigh. Marika realized that she was still holding her parfait glass and spoon in one hand.

"Like I said, because you're oblivious. You'd rather you were kidnapped by that fake cop?"

"Still, that doesn't mean you had to shoot off a signal beam!"

"There were special forces and riot cops there, and they didn't say a thing. They were all there for you, and they came loaded for bear."

"I highly doubt they were 'loaded for bear' just because of me."

There was a low rumbling noise, and black smoke started rising from the warehouse district.

"I strongly suggest that we get out of here, quickly. Are you with me?"

Chiaki turned away from Marika and started walking down the alleyway. Marika flinched at a second explosion and resigned herself to following after Chiaki.

"Why is all this happening?"

"Because you stand to inherit a pirate ship."

Chiaki pressed forward while she finished the remainder of her parfait.

"How'd they find out so quick!?"

"A letter of marque is an official document. Anyone can see it once it's made public."

"They put my name on it? That's a violation of my privacy!"

"Actually I don't think it includes your name. Not until after you become captain, at least. The only thing public was the Bentenmaru's captain's notice of death."

"But I only heard about my dad dying yesterday." Marika quickened her pace and closed the gap with Chiaki. "How'd they hear it so quickly?"

"These people aren't normal civilians. The special forces were dispatched by their superiors, and the riot police wouldn't be there without orders."

A chill ran down Marika's spine, and she took another glance towards Lamp House.

"Wait. The police, the army…" With a look of realization, she turned back to Chiaki, who was still eating her parfait. "They were there because of pirates too?"

"What is it you think I've been trying to tell you?"

"But why?" Marika had stopped for a moment, and hurried to catch back up with Chiaki. "What do they have to do with me becoming a pirate ship captain?"

"Pirates are criminals. Fugitives who act outside of the law."

"But I thought they had a letter of marque?"

"Even with a letter of marque, you're still a pirate. But when those pirates are sanctioned it's even more of a hassle. Do I really have to explain it to you?" Chiaki, still clutching her parfait glass, stared, frustrated, at Marika.

"What do the military and criminal organizations have in common?" she pressed.

Marika blinked. She hadn't been expecting the question.

"They're both rude?"

"Wrong! I mean they might be, but that's not my point. The military, criminals, and the police too, they all use violence. And in the case of the military and the police it doesn't matter if they break the law, as long as they're following orders."

"What about criminals?"

"They're the same. They aren't afraid to use violence to intimidate, and if that doesn't work and the police or the military get involved, things can get even worse."

"I know all that, but what does it have to do with pirates?"

"You still don't get it!?" Chiaki thrust the parfait spoon into the nearly empty glass and stabbed her index finger at Marika. "A pirate with a letter of marque isn't part of the military, or the police, or the mafia, but they're nevertheless in control of a huge amount of firepower. They're a threat! You think nobody would notice when there's a shakeup in the upper levels of that sort of thing?"

"The upper levels…?" Marika pointed at herself, reality still not registering. "You mean me?"

Chiaki sighed.

"Who's supposed to be the Bentenmaru's next captain?"

"I am."

"Don't tell me you don't realize how much firepower a pirate ship has? The things you can do with one?"

Marika couldn't answer. Chiaki scooped out the last of her chocolate parfait and looked back at Marika.

"You really don't know?"

"I mean, it's not like I've ever been on a pirate ship before."

Chiaki fixed her gaze on Marika and thrust the empty glass towards her.

"Thank you. That was delicious."

"You're welcome."

She took the glass, then fished a paper napkin from the pocket of her maid uniform and handed it to Chiaki. Chiaki looked at the napkin, back at Marika, then frantically wiped at the sides of her mouth.

"Your ride's here. Maybe they can explain it to you."

"Huh?"

"Kane. He told me earlier that he was the Bentenmaru's pilot."

Marika became aware of the hum of an engine and began to look around, finally noticing the classic black commuter tearing its way through the alley.

"See you tomorrow."

Without so much as a wave, Chiaki took off down the alleyway and disappeared into a natural/organic supermarket. The retro commuter took her place, brakes and tires screeching as it came flamboyantly to a stop next to Marika.

"Katou Marika! What a relief, are you okay?" Kane released his grip on the wheel of Misa's commuter and jumped out the driver's side door. "I was worried. I heard a firefight broke out at Lamp House. What happened?"

Marika stared blankly at the rear door of the supermarket, holding the parfait glass out in front of her.

"She left without paying."

"What?"

"Ah, it’s nothing."

Marika shook her head and turned around, watching as black smoke rose from the direction of the restaurant. Kane was holding a transceiver up to his mouth.

"I found her. What's the situation over there?"

"I take it she's still in one piece?" the voice on the other end answered immediately.

"Not a scratch. What about Lamp House?"

"Lots of commotion but relatively little damage. The fake cop who started it all was neutralized by the Golden Family hit squad pretty quick, and then handed over to the Shin Okuhama special police. The rest are either being held as suspects or split as soon as the fighting was over."

"What happened to the restaurant!?" Marika shouted, reaching over the driver's side door, grabbing the transceiver, and dragging it over to her mouth. Kane, who maintained his grip as it was being wrested away, pressed the talk button. "Is everyone okay!?"

"Yeah, don't worry, no one was injured. I'll let them know you got out safe too."

She could hear several familiar voices in the background behind Misa. When she heard their cheerful chattering, she unconsciously hugged the transceiver to her chest.

"Thank goodness, I'm glad they're safe," she said, bringing Kane's transceiver back up to her lips. "Tell everyone not to worry, and that I'll be back as soon as I can."

"Yeah, we'll head over your way," Kane responded, pulling back the transceiver. Marika hastily opened the door, gathered up her puffy skirt, and plopped down into the open car’s front seat. Kane glanced at her in the passenger seat, still holding the transceiver in one hand.

"They know you're safe, maybe it would be better if I took you home?"

Marika shook her head without looking at him.

"No can do, I left my bag there, and I can't go home dressed like this."

"Right, back to the restaurant it is, then."

He grabbed the wheel and took off in Misa's commuter.

The commotion far outstripped any obvious damage to Lamp House.

By the time Marika returned, the police had carefully cordoned off the restaurant. The investigator, who did not seem particularly interested in delving too deeply into the details of the incident, simply let her go after asking a few routine questions.

The unexpected firefight had damaged tables and chairs inside the restaurant, left bullet holes in the walls, and broken dishes. There were even signs of what appeared to be a small explosion, but according to a repairman who had arrived practically alongside the police, they had already begun to clean up while inspecting the damage.

The contractor said that they would carry out repairs throughout the night, that things would probably be back to normal by the next day, and that all of the employees, including the waitresses, could go home. The official story seemed to be that someone impersonating a police officer had tried to kidnap one of the Lamp House's waitresses.

The high school girls who staffed the restaurant changed back into their uniforms in the undamaged dressing room and headed off into town with their day's wages, unfazed by their unprecedented early clocking out.

Marika, however, declined to the chance to go party with her friends from work, saying that she just wanted to go home and rest.

She pushed her bicycle out the back door. Waiting for her, arms crossed sternly, was not Misa or Kane as she had expected, but her mother herself, Katou Ririka.

"Mom!?" It was still light out. Her mother's space traffic control shift wasn’t supposed to have ended until after the sun had set. "But what about work!?"

"I heard my daughter got caught up in a firefight. Nothing short of all-out war could have kept me at work." She pointed at the bed of the pickup truck she used for her commute. "Load up your bike. I doubt they're going to try anything again, but they've probably still got surveillance on you."

The casual dropping of words like "surveillance" caused Marika to look around instinctively. Nothing about the evening canal district seemed out of place.

She loaded her bike into the bed of the pickup, and with Ririka in the driver's seat they headed off. The pickup truck made its way towards their home.

Inside the cab they listened to the news like always. They waited, but the announcer never mentioned a shooting at a canal district cafe.

Ririka was the first to say something.

"It must have been quite a shock."

Marika turned and looked at her mother. The pickup was on auto-pilot, Ririka's hands separated from the steering wheel.

"My mom used to be Captain Ririka."

Marika called her “mom,” like she had when she was young, rather than using her first name. Ririka looked at her daughter. She looked distraught.

"My mom used to be a pirate."

Ririka turned her eyes back towards the road.

"I was older than you are now. When I first joined the Bentenmaru."

"Why did you become a pirate? Weren't you scared?"

Marika sidled across the bench seat towards her mother, gripped the sleeve of her suit.

"Scared?" She looked her daughter in the eyes. "This is the first time something like this has happened to you, right? Was it scary for you?"

"I was more surprised than scared." Marika hugged her shoulders. "I never thought I'd have a run-in with the army or the police, but then there they were. I'd never even imagined being in a shootout."

"You'll be fine." Ririka reached her arm around her daughter's shoulder and pulled her closer. "Maybe you'd be better off if it hadn't happened, but if you decide to become a pirate, it won't seem all that strange after a while."

"So you weren't scared?" Encircled by Ririka's arm, Marika stared up at her mother's face. "Calling yourself Captain Ririka, becoming a pirate, weren't you afraid?"

"Constantly," Ririka answered with a shrug. "You get used to it, but at first my heart was constantly racing."

"I see." Marika breathed a sigh of relief. "I guess it would be normal, when you're on a real pirate ship, raiding people."

"Being a pirate isn't all about the marauding, you know. I may have called myself Captain Ririka, but Gonza was the one doing all the real captain's work. I didn't have to worry about looking after the ship or the crew."

Ririka took her arm off of Marika's shoulder and pulled her phone from her pocket. She dialed a recently added number.

"Hold on a minute, I’m calling a friend."

The recipient picked up immediately.

"Hello. Yeah, it's me. I figured you weren't far…yes, I’m aware. We're on our way home right now, but I thought maybe we'd take a little detour. Do you think you could drop off the you-know-what? I was hoping all of it. What do I need it for? I thought I'd show my daughter some of the tools of the trade."

"What do you mean, tools of the trade!?" Marika cried suddenly.

"Head east on Route 4 past the mountains, there's a strip of desert called the Adachi Plains." Ririka held onto her phone while she punched a new destination into the pickup's control panel. "Get off at interchange 18 and head north, the army has a bombing range out there. Nobody'll care if we mess around out there, and they're not scheduled to use it again for another three days…you'll be fine, they close the gate when it's in use. Don't worry, people are always in and out of there, the military and the police won't care as long as you're not breaking any laws. We're on our way now, see you when you get there."

Ririka ended the call and returned the phone to her suit pocket. The pickup truck, with its new destination, changed lanes, choosing a route that took it towards the freeway interchange.

"What are 'tools of the trade?'" Marika asked, more softly this time.

"Guns."

Ririka's eyes remained focused forward, the road illuminated by the truck's automatic headlights.

"Pirates use anything they can, from microbeams hidden inside rings to armor-piercing missiles, but I took a heavy machine gun whenever I raided a ship."

Marika looked at her mother. She imagined pirates boarding ships carrying their guns one-handed, but she just couldn't picture her mother holding a handgun.

"Did you have practice, shooting?"

"Naturally. It's part of the job. And I don’t just mean basic firearms training for self-defense. I learned how to shoot everything from basic handguns up to heavy missile launchers."

There was little traffic on their drive out of town. The pickup settled on a new route and changed lanes.

"It wasn't just time at the shooting range either. I had to pick up basic maintenance, how to make modifications, quickdrawing, rapid fire, combat shooting."

Marika listened with rapt attention. She knew her mother carried a small beam gun for protection, that she sometimes took it to the range, but she had never seen her fire it.

"The easiest was the flash derringer. Especially for a woman, as the guns get larger and heavier, even just carrying them becomes a chore."

Ririka formed her left hand into the shape of a beam gun and mimicked firing it.

"Do you still have it? Is it the one you carry?"

Ririka placed one hand on the wheel and shook her head.

"During boarding actions I'd take the biggest machine gun I could find. Something nasty, pierce the hull of a ship if you let loose with it. You know why?"

"Combat is all about firepower, right?"

"Where'd you learn something like that? No, it's not about firepower. In a firefight, nine times out of ten it's the one who shoots first who wins. There's only one reason to take a big-ass machine gun like that."

The pickup accelerated as it climbed the interchange ramp. Ririka grabbed the steering wheel.

"Posturing."

"Posturing? What do you mean?"

"With a tiny pistol, something you can hide in the palm of your hand, the people watching won't be able to tell you're even holding it. But if you show up looking like a pirate, a huge machine pistol rattling at your hip with every step, even the nitwit luxury cruise liner passengers can tell, this pirate is armed to the teeth."

They merged onto the freeway. Ririka disabled the autopilot and took over driving herself, moving into the high-speed lane as the truck picked up speed.

"Even a machine gun can be fitted with a limiter so you won't accidentally blow up a ship, and you won't have to worry about killing someone if you end up hitting them. At full power though you'll take a mark right out if you manage to hit ‘em. Punch a hole straight through the bulkhead too, maybe even get sucked out into the vacuum of space. Energy weapons can penetrate, or you might burn yourself alive with a plasma stream. Even if you don't, disable the limiter or set the power level wrong and you might end up putting someone into a coma when all you wanted to do was knock them out. When you have that much power hanging at your hip, it’s all on you when and where you want to pull the trigger. And when I realized that, I was terrified."

Ririka moved to the passing lane and formed her right hand into the shape of a pistol. She slowly aimed it at the commuter in front of them.

"Police, soldiers, they pull the trigger whenever they're ordered to. They don't have to think about it. It's their leader’s job to take responsibility for the outcome. But we're pirates. Deciding whether or not to shoot, that's all on us."

Her mouth mimicked the sound of the blast that accompanied an energy beam being fired. The commuter in front of them noticed the approaching pickup and moved back to the lane for normal traffic.

"And when you do have to shoot, you don't get time to think it over."

Ririka placed her hand back on the steering wheel. She quickly overtook the commuter in the other lane.

"But if you can forget about all that, a beam gun really is flashy and pretty. I’ll let you give one a shot."

Along Route 4, running east from Shin Okuhama through the mostly untouched forests of the Eastern National Park, lies a long tunnel that cuts underneath the four kilometer high peak of the Sawanami Mountains.

The other side of the tunnel opens up onto a vast stretch of badlands called the Adachi Plains. Despite the name, it's a parched, rocky desert with little vegetation.

Just off interchange 18 is a tiny shopping center consisting of an all-night convenience store, a gas station, and an unassuming rest stop. It's the last stop before getting off the freeway and the last chance to take advantage of automatic driving. Although the road was built to handle heavy military transports, it lacks a smart road system.

The military supply road also marks the end of the self-illuminated lanes. Ririka rambled casually along the wide, empty roadway using only the illumination of her headlights.

The satellite map on the center console, showing the truck and the surrounding area, was wildly simple when compared to the city, and not just because they were inside an official military zone. The desert stretching off in either direction from the supply road was devoid of any features worth displaying; it was nothing but a flat, continuous expanse.

Occasionally a large fissure or chunk of rock would register along the straight stretch of road. Ririka was driving under the posted speed limit, and eventually a light appeared behind the pickup.

"They made it."

The light quickly morphed into a pair of approaching headlights. They pulled in behind the pickup, making no attempt to pass.

Ririka clipped her phone's headset to her ear. She called out a number, which the phone dialed.

"Hello? Is this Brigadier General Kwodron? This is Katou Ririka, from traffic control. I'm at the Adachi Plains test range right now. Right, I was hoping I could have a little fun out by the Marinera ravine…yeah, of course I will."

"Brigadier General!?" Marika exclaimed as soon as Ririka ended her call. "Who did you just call!?"

"Georgia Kwodron. I'm pretty sure you've met him before. Older man from the defense force?"

"Oh…" Memories of a crisp, tall man in a black uniform from some of her mother's parties came rushing back to her. "From the HQ in Shin Okuhama? I thought he was a colonel or lieutenant colonel?"

"Apparently he was promoted to general this past spring. He's been busy and hasn't had a chance to celebrate the new rank yet."

"Even so, how do you get a general on the phone with one call?"

"They always need to coordinate and consult with traffic controllers on things up in space. Usually I wouldn't even need to get in touch if I were just going to mess around on the range, but things are a little different this time."

Ririka glanced in her rear-view mirror at the car tailing them.

"Try to keep up," she said, turning off of the supply road.

"Where are we going!?"

Marika reached for the assist handle to keep her upright in the suddenly rocking vehicle. The route they were taking didn't show up on the center console's satellite map, and the pickup advanced forward with only its headlights as guidance.

"These mountains are actually a sight to see in the daylight."

Marika noticed that the satellite map showed a complex change in elevation ahead of them.

"Did you say something about the Marinera Ravine?"

Marika remembered visiting it on a field trip in elementary school. The giant chasm made up of massive, bizarre rocks looked like some twisted, evil kingdom from a movie, but all she could remember from her childhood was how hot it had been.

"Isn't that a tourist spot? Are you sure this is okay?"

"Oh, yeah, we could have taken the tourist route too. They only maintain the roads out near the main entrance, but it's more fun to head off-road like this."

"Is it safe?" Marika asked, concerned, scanning the area illuminated by the truck's headlights. The image offered by the satellite map was grainy, and it didn't look like it would be of any help in driving.

"Don't worry. I've been out here a bunch of times."

The desert surface was a hard, hundred million year old bedrock, and there was no worry that the tires of either the pickup or the classic commuter would slip or get stuck. Heedless of the pace of the commuter behind them, Ririka raced to the base of the Marinera Ravine.

Ririka pulled into an ancient tunnel in the rock face that looked like it had been excavated by combat engineers' energy beams, and stopped the pickup at the far side. She switched the headlights over to high beams, illuminating a mysterious object towering in front of them.

"What's that?" Marika wondered, but after staring for a moment she got it. "A tank!?"

"That's right."

The classic car that had been tailing them pulled up along the passenger side of the pickup and stopped. Misa waved casually from the driver's seat.

The headlights of Misa's commuter were even brighter than the pickup's. The wide beams tilted upwards—apparently a custom modification—leaving the dark mountainside awash in light.

There wasn't just one tank there. Several of the machines were scattered haphazardly about, and beyond them a large aircraft that appeared to have made a belly landing, its fuselage just barely noticeable as it tilted on its side. Further back she could see what seemed to be the remains of a crashed spacecraft.

Ririka left her headlights on and climbed down from the driver's seat.

"Sorry for making you haul everything out here this late."

"As if I could refuse a request from Captain Ririka." Misa also climbed out of her car, leaving her headlights on.

"We only brought what we could fit. I hope these are what you wanted."

Kane stepped out of the car and pulled away the sheet that had been covering the open rear seat. Marika's eyes went wide with surprise when she saw what filled the back seat of the car.

"What are these?"

"This fat tube-looking thing is a Dora portable missile, the oversized one next to that is an anti-armor rifle, there's a multi-grenade launcher with a shotgun, an assault rifle…"

Ririka peered into the back seat and pulled out a bulky, heavy handgun that looked too large for her hands. "What's this?"

"Ah, that's a turret-mounted heavy beam gun that someone modified to be handheld," Misa said. She snooped around the back seat and fished out a cartridge the size of a large beer can. "It's just the cartridge and a firing mechanism, no focusing or amplification, so it can’t put out more than thirty percent of the juice of a class 4 beam gun. Still more than enough for something you can walk around with. You wanna try it out?"

"I guess it's fine if I start the fireworks."

Ririka skillfully snapped open the bulky frame and inserted the cartridge into the grotesquely wide-barreled beam gun.

"It may shoot an energy beam, but at this class it's still got a good kick to it," Misa said as Ririka assumed a shooting stance. "Think you'll be okay?"

"You of all people should know I'm no beginner. Even so, it's been a while since I fired something of this caliber."

The beam gun wasn't equipped with even so much as a display for sighting. It didn't look as if long range accuracy were a concern.

"So, what is this place?" Marika quipped at Ririka, who stood there holding the loaded beam gun with both hands.

"A military bombing range. They use it for practicing air-to-ground assaults from planes and choppers, and for practicing shelling."

Ririka pulled a pair of shooting glasses from her breast pocket and put them on.

"They place gutted tanks, aircraft, and starships out here to use as targets. Here, these are for you."

She pulled out another pair of shooting glasses. At first glance they appeared to be nothing more than thin sunglasses. Marika took them and tried to look through the lenses.

"What do we need sunglasses for when it's this dark out?"

"They're not sunglasses, they're shooting glasses for target practice. Try them on."

Marika wore the shooting glasses as she was told. They barely made things look any darker.

"They're to protect your eyes," Kane explained as he put on his own pair. "No need to worry about your eyes being damaged in the event of an unexpected explosion. Plus, if you stare directly at a class 4 beam without shooting glasses on, it'll scorch your eyes."

Marika slipped the shooting glasses off and looked at the lenses again. The thin tint on them didn't look like it would help much.

"Are you sure these will be enough?"

"They're a special type of polarized glass used on spaceship windows. They're thinner than the real thing so they won't be protecting you against any missile impacts, but they'll cut out any harmful cosmic rays and radiation, and they react instantly to flashes, dampening them so you won't get disoriented. It's bad enough in the daylight, but you definitely don't want to stare at a beam at night while your pupils are dilated."

"Fire in the hole!"

At the sound of Ririka's voice, Marika hurriedly placed the shooting glasses back over her eyes. Ririka turned to face the large shell of the starship that lay beyond the tanks and let loose a snap shot from the large-bore beam gun.

The concentrated beam of light, several times more powerful than the flare that had gone off directly in front of Marika at the restaurant, lanced through the darkness. For an instant the area was as bright as midday, the beam scattering as it struck the towering wall of the starship's hull.

Illuminated by the light of the beam, Marika could tell for the first time that they were standing at the bottom of a crater-like basin.

"Well that was awesome," Ririka said, lowering the wide-barreled beam gun, almost too hot to hold after being fired. "It may be an energy beam but the recoil is like firing a cannon."

Marika lifted her shooting glasses upwards—they had already returned to their original color—and stared at her mother. She lacked the appreciation for what it meant to pack a warship-tier beam into something that could be carried in one hand.

"You wanna try shooting it?"

Ririka brought the beam gun up to rest against her shoulder and smiled at her daughter. Marika frantically shook her head.

"Too much for you? Misa, did you bring anything smaller?"

"Only this." She pulled a smaller beam gun from the pocket of her lab coat, small enough that it fit in the palm of her hand.

"A half-class Rheinmetall?" Ririka gazed nostalgically at the tiny beam gun. "You’re still carrying that antique around after all this time."

Misa skilfully opened the grip and checked the remaining power in the cartridge, then casually pointed the Rheinmetall's barrel at a nearby tank.

"Here we go."

Marika frantically lowered the shooting glasses from her forehead back down over her eyes. Misa pulled the trigger.

Three thin, red beams cored into what remained of the tank's turret. For just a moment the section they struck continued to glow red.

"Works like a charm. Do you know how to use it?" Misa asked. Marika wildly shook her head again.

"Ririka, what have you been teaching your daughter? I thought firearms were basic education."

"I never got a chance. Let me borrow that. Marika, come over here."

Ririka took the slender Rheinmetall beam gun from Misa's hand and set it on the hood of the pickup.

"Have a look. This is the Rheinmetall Model 32, a fairly common beam gun."

Outside of movies, television, and toys, most people only saw a firearm when police or security guards were carrying them, or on a military base. Kane had pulled out a flashlight and was shining it on the hood of the truck. Marika's eyes were fixed on the beam gun’s thin, elegant silhouette.

"There's one rule you need to know before you handle it. Never point it at a person."

Kane and Misa looked at each other and burst out laughing. That rule was for civilians who never expected to find themselves in a fight.

"Don't laugh! She's a beginner, she should at least learn that much."

"Does it have a safety?" Marika asked earnestly, pulling her eyes away from the Rheinmetall. Ririka pointed at the grip.

"All you need to do is hold it firmly, and that will deactivate the safety. Go ahead, pick it up."

Marika hesitantly reached for the beam gun. It was heavier than it looked, like any high-powered weapon was. But when she held the grip like she had been shown, it slipped effortlessly and familiarly into her right hand.

"Now try firing," Ririka said, as Marika looked around searching for a target. She re-settled the shooting glasses over her eyes and held the beam gun out with one hand.

"Hold it with both hands, to start," Ririka said. Marika brought her left hand over top her right on the Rheinmetall's grip.

"Since it's a beam gun, there's not as much recoil as when you fire a slug thrower. Don't worry that it's going to go flying out of your hands or anything. So do you know why I told you to use both hands?"

"So I can focus?"

"Not a bad guess. Shoot one-handed for now. Pick a target and fire." Ririka looked at the abandoned tank hulls around them. "Any of them will do. Just point and shoot."

Marika brought the Rheinmetall's barrel in line with the large tank directly in front of her.

"Can I fire?"

"Go for it," Ririka confirmed. Marika focused on her target and pulled the trigger.

The pigment of the shooting glasses barely changed. The thin beam struck the tank’s tread in a flash of red light. It left behind a dull, red glow.

"Try it again, aim at the same spot."

Marika pulled the trigger again, as she was told. The beam hit a spot not far from where the first one had landed.

"All right, next. Do you see those antennas sticking out sideways from the downed ship?"

Marika picked out the antennas, gleaming faintly in the headlights of Misa's commuter, and nodded.

"I see them. You think I can hit something that small?"

"Give it a shot."

Marika pointed the Rheinmetall in her right hand past the shell of the airplane at the starship's overturned hull. An array of antennas radiated outward from the side of the craft.

After what she thought was careful aiming, Marika squeezed the Rheinmetall's trigger. The red beam streaked into the night sky. Her shot missed, the beam sucked up by space.

"Try again."

"It may be hopeless."

She aimed and fired again, but the sliver of the beam didn't even tease the long rod of the antenna.

"Again."

This time Marika brought her left hand up alongside her right in support of the Rheinmetall. It felt a little more stable. As she took aim at the far-off target, she could tell that the barrel of the beam gun was wobbling.

She squeezed the trigger. She missed again, but the beam had come within a hair's breadth of hitting the antenna.

"Why did you use two hands?" Ririka asked. Marika looked down at the Rheinmetall, clutched between both her hands.

"It's more stable that way."

Ririka nodded.

"That's why I told you to use both hands. Now, how about we move you up to something a little bigger."

Ririka rummaged through the back of Misa's commuter and came out holding a large beam gun with a long convergent barrel.

"That thing's huge!"

Marika stared wide-eyed at the massive gun. It looked like she'd need two hands to even aim it—her right hand on the grip and her left to support the barrel.

"This is an Armalite armor-piercing beam gun. I used to carry one just like it when I was on the job, though this one’s been lightened."

"Captain Ririka used something like that?"

"Don't call me that!"

Ririka handed over the Armalite. Its stock was shortened—recoil was less of a concern for beam guns—but it was large and heavy enough that she needed both hands to hold it.

"It was developed by the military quite a while back. The concept was supposed to combine the power of a rifle with the size of a beam gun, but as you can see what they ended up with was a beam gun in a rifle-sized package. It was so unwieldy that they never made very many of them."

Ririka examined the control panel on the Armalite's right side to ensure that its energy cartridge had enough power left. She turned the power dial up to maximum.

"Are you sure you should let a beginner start off at full power?" Misa asked, though she didn't sound particularly concerned.

"Don't worry, that's why I gave it to her. This is the smaller-bore commercial model, not the military version I used to use. I know what it can do at full power."

Ririka finished making her adjustments and gave Marika a thumbs-up.

"There, now take a shot at the tank."

Marika nodded, and with her right hand on the grip and her left hand wrapped around the barrel, she squeezed the Armalite's trigger.

The shockwave that pierced the air struck Marika's ears with a heavy crack. Had the polarization of her shooting glasses not been instantaneous, the dazzling beam would certainly have been enough to overwhelm her eyesight as it left the barrel with a notable recoil, and as it connected with the closest tank it cored through the body and sent plasma flying from within.

151

"Whoa…"

Marika looked down at the weighty Armalite armor-piercing beam gun, unable to accept that what had just happened had come from her own hands. She cradled the barrel, felt its faint warmth as if her body were calling out for it.

"Can I fire it again?" she asked Ririka. Ririka smiled and nodded.

"Go for it."

Marika pointed the Armalite at a nearby tank and fired a series of shots. All of them penetrated its armor, searing away the reflective coating and sending plasma erupting from the open hatch.

The long-abandoned tank had already been set ablaze several times, leaving nothing inside to actually burn, and the flames disappeared quickly, but the way the beams sliced effortlessly through its thick armor was enough to give a sense of their power.

"A bit trigger happy, ain't she?" Kane whispered as he watched from behind. He could practically hear her laughing.

"Beams already look so flashy at night, I figured why not throw an anti-armor beam gun into the mix."

Misa shook her head. "You're not helping, Ririka."

The Armalite had an even easier time cutting through the aircraft that lay beyond the tanks. Marika then turned her sites on the distant starship hull and pulled the trigger.

"This is real power."

The Armalite's full power beam danced off the armored hull. The reflective barrier beneath sent the beam flying off into the night sky, even as it melted through the surrounding heat shielding.

Marika stood there frozen, still aiming the weapon, as if she had suddenly returned to her senses.

"What you're holding there in your hands, that's power. If you become a pirate, you'll end up commanding even more power. Does that scare you?"

Marika slowly raised the barrel of the beam gun toward the sky. She pulled the trigger one last time.

With nothing to stop it, the beam traveled up toward space. She cradled the Armalite with her right hand and raised the shooting glasses, watching the beam as it seared through the sky.

"It's so beautiful," she said, and looked at her mother. "Thank you. Can I shoot something else now?"

Chapter 3: Way Station

The lights flickered on in the dark of dock C68.

"Whew!"

The large—by modern standards—two hundred meter long solar sailer spanned the enclosed dock, its hull a white spindle that resembled a collapsed umbrella.

Kane marveled at the dock’s massive interior, more surprised that such a large space would be dedicated to a training vessel than he was by the size of the ship itself.

"I knew they were rich, but to keep a space this huge on the station, they’ve got to be on a whole different level of rich."

"Really?" Marika had been to dock C68 enough times that she had a mental map of the layout, and she floated lazily into the zero gravity berth.

"Simply docking a normal ship takes an absurd amount of money, let alone in a berthing like this. Docks like this one are for warships that don’t have to worry about money, or cruise liners trying to lure in rich passengers. Even the cruisers meant for big shots dock outside. How deep do your pockets have to be to keep a ship this big languishing in its own dock?"

"Apparently the dock was built specifically for this ship, and we get to lease it at a discount since they don't have any other use for it," the club president Jenny explained matter-of-factly, sidling up next to Kane. "The shape and the facilities were all made to fit the Odette II, and they won't work on any other ship."

"Is that right?"

Kane listened to her explanation, wondering how much truth there really was to the public justification. There should have been a plethora of other uses for a pressurized yard big enough to hold a two hundred meter solar sailer. With the sail retracted, the shape of the Odette II wasn't much different from that of a regular starship.

"Even so, it's impressive."

Though the dock was old, there were no signs of burnt out lights, no whiff of mold or the metallic odors that usually accompany sealed spaces, no smell of propellant.

"This equipment isn't cutting edge, but it's still pretty high quality. It looks like it won't take much to get it flying."

"The entryway is over there," Jenny said, pointing towards the midsection of the solar sailer, which was anchored to the walls of the dock by several mooring lines. Marika launched herself towards the ship using one of the lines as a railing and opened the airtight hatch.

"After you, sir," Jenny said to Kane, smiling. "Or should I say, Captain?"

"Cut that out," Kane said, waving a hand in front of his face. "You go on ahead and start with the inspection. I want to give the ship a once-over from the outside first."

"But," Jenny said, with playful doe eyes, "I thought only someone with a captain's license was allowed to do the pre-flight check?"

"This is my first time seeing the ship." Kane knew from experience rather than regulations what was necessary. He lightly kicked off the floor of the dock and into the air. "How can I be sure we're safe to launch if I don’t check everything myself?"

He was about to bounce off of the mooring lines supporting the ship to change direction when he changed his mind and grabbed the braided synthetic rope. He was a club advisor and a teacher—better that he not go floating around so effortlessly in zero gravity.

Like the model decorating the club room, the real Odette II was equipped with triangularly arranged brig-style masts that folded into the body while in dock. As he had come to suspect while poring over the schematics, the sails and rigging of the actual ship were much more complex than those of the model.

The pristine white surface of the hull showed little fading or sun-scorch; he imagined that the ship had seen a startlingly low amount of use since being re-designated as a training vessel.

"Yep, just as I thought."

As he leisurely made his way from midship to bow inspecting the external hardware, he noticed that the solar sailer had a curiously large number of sensors and antennas still attached to it for a civilian-registered vessel.

"Despite all the modifications, there were no records of them being removed. They must have kept them just in case. This is equipment from when it was still a converted cruiser."

Many of the sensors were probably so old that they were either pointless or even unusable in the modern landscape. But visible spectrum sensors and the various radars could still provide sufficient data—if they even still worked.

"Now, what about the maneuvering thrusters…"

He hunted for the unassuming supplementary propulsion systems installed at various points along the hull.

Capable of moving the ship regardless of whether the sails were deployed or not, they possessed significant thrust for their size, but were still within the specifications for a civilian vessel. Still far less power than those of a warship intended for combat maneuvering; they wouldn't be pulling any fancy moves.

"They look normal enough, I shouldn't have to worry about letting the students take over."

Keeping operating costs low was more important than anything else on a civilian ship. The only time the delicate control of the maneuvering thrusters was required was while entering or leaving a port.

The bow of the ship was equipped, in proper solar sailer fashion, with a bowsprit on which to deploy the foresail. The tapered, crystalline mast could fulfill several functions, such as serving as a long-distance directional communications antenna or the oscillator for a high-frequency radar.

"I didn't know they made monocrystals this big."

The bowsprit was constructed of a single uniform crystal, though Kane was unsure when it had been installed. Unlike most materials, which were typically made of a composite of different elements, the monomolecular crystal was impervious to nearly everything short of antimatter.

"This ship’s had a lot of work put into it for something so old."

The masts and the complex machinery used to extend them looked fine from the outside, but he couldn't tell a thing about the internals. It wasn't the sort of equipment that could be left damaged or lacking. He thought about the haphazard state of repairs on the Bentenmaru and sighed.

"It'd be a waste to put all this money into maintaining a normal civilian ship, let alone a training vessel for a bunch of high schoolers."

The hull was a long spindle with its primary drives in the stern of the ship, like most solar sailers. Based on what he had seen on the model and the records that he had examined, there were no surprises to be found in the modest engine’s output.

"Of course, the real question is whether the drives even work after sitting in dock for twenty years."

He peered into the acceleration chamber through the triangular array of massive plasma thruster nozzles on the aft of the ship. There were no signs of burnt propellant and no damage to the rows of accelerator grids.

By the time he returned to the midships entry hatch, all of the club members had already made their way inside, the dock deserted save for the maintenance robot floating about. He took a moment to retreat to the wall and take in the full sight of the Odette II.

"The white paint feels like it’s trying to throw you off…"

Kane pushed off the wall and flew towards the hatch. As he neared the entryway he realized what it was that felt off.

"It's a civilian ship, but it doesn't have any windows."

Installing windows meant having to open up holes in the structure, weakening it overall. While cruise ships and passenger liners needed to be equipped with portholes and observation decks, starships were traditionally designed with as few windows as possible.

Information on anything outside the ship could be collected using various radars and sensors. Even with windows, the amount of data that a crew could collect with their bare eyes was limited. Windows were only installed to be used as a last resort when radar and sensors failed, and even then their effect was mostly psychological.

Although Kane's inspection had been largely cursory, he hadn't been able to spot a single window during his circuit of the outside of the ship.

"For a training vessel, they certainly didn't care much about making it beginner-friendly."

He set foot inside the ship. Like on the dock itself, the artificial gravity was still disabled. He looked around the cramped interior of the ship and cracked a smile; like the Bentenmaru, its upgrades had been stacked one on top of the other without regard for the amount of internal space.

"It's not exactly what I'd have picked for a high school girls' yacht club."

Kane already had a mental image of the Odette II's internal layout from his earlier research. He had entered through the small cargo bay door on the port side, and he headed aft towards the bridge, which lay just forward of the engine room.

Judging from his own experience, the corridor was narrow enough to for him to question the claim that it had been built as a cargo hauler. All the hard edges were cushioned, and the corridor was tight enough that you'd have trouble passing someone while trying to carry anything. It reminded him more of a warship than a civilian vessel.

"Ah, you made it," one of his students called out to him, poking her head out from up above, just past the point where the corridor split into a six-way intersection. "We finished our check of the life support's circulation system. The water tank was totally empty like the logs said, so we'll need to refill it before we can test everything else."

"All right, let's make filling the tank and getting everything running our goal for today." He had already made arrangements for replenishing the water supply. "We're connected to external power, so as long as we keep life support running continuously we should be able to notice if there are any problems."

"Cold storage in the pantry is confirmed to be working properly," another student reported, holding a checklist in one hand. "It cooled down as soon as I hit the switch, so I think it should be fine. But…"

Her eyes dropped to the list. She seemed to have difficulty getting the words out.

"What's wrong?"

"The pantry wasn't empty. There were a bunch of old ration packs stacked in a box, probably from the last time the ship was taken out of dock."

"Ah, I see," Kane said, giving an understanding nod. "Don't worry, rations will last at least fifty years before they need to be disposed of. I'll check them out later, but the last crew probably just left them in preparation for whenever they'd use the ship again."

He considered the possibility that they had remained past their expiration date. "As long as they aren't in your way, just set them aside somewhere nobody will accidentally eat one."

"Yes sir!"

The bridge was located at the very end of the corridor that ran straight through the center of the ship. Kane passed through the sealed hatch onto the main bridge, which had become a flurry of activity.

He could make out the sounds of several distinct warnings and alerts; most of the control panels that ringed the two concentric circles making up up the disc-shaped bridge were not properly operational.

"Not again?"

The club members were flying about, calmly shouting over the warning sirens as they went to work connecting the various machines and electronics.

"There you are," Marika said, clinging upside down to the captain's chair while she called up a status report. "We've updated the star charts to the most recent versions. We're also making good progress on getting connected to the network."

"Progress, huh?" Kane looked around the alert-filled bridge skeptically. "It doesn't look like it."

"Communications are also being set to modern specifications. We'll need to upgrade the equipment for any settings we can't change ourselves, but the electrical relays and transmitter both still have some life in them, so I think they'll be fine."

Jenny, in the captain’s chair at the center of it all, clapped her hands together.

"The central computer is finished updating. I'm going to cut power to the bridge for a second and bring it back online. Is anybody not ready yet?"

"Hold on a second, I'm not done installing the datalink bypass device yet!"

"Just give me five more seconds! I've almost got the security center under control!"

"What's taking you so long?"

She waited several seconds.

"There, got it!"

"Same here!"

Jenny scanned the bridge to make sure none of the other stations needed more time, then lifted the intercom in her hand up to her ear.

"Bridge to dock C68 dockside, do you copy?"

"This is dockside, I hear you loud and clear."

"I'm going to initiate a restart of the main bridge controls. This is the final check before cutting all power to the bridge."

The students scattered throughout the bridge all raised their hands.

"Cutting external power in three, two, one, zero!"

A moment later the bridge was plunged into darkness. The control panels as well as the normal lighting all went dark, the only remaining illumination coming from the students' portable electronic devices and the faint emergency lighting.

"External power is offline. Did it work?"

"It worked, confirming power offline. Re-initiate on the count of ten," Jenny said, watching the second hand of her wristwatch tick away. "Ten, nine…"

The students on the bridge began to count down in unison. At the count of zero the normal lighting sprang back to life.

"Oh?"

Kane had been anticipating the return of the alerts, but he looked around the bridge to find all of the control panels' screens operating normally. The old ship's displays—a patchwork of different eras and models, holographic and two-dimensional—painted the bridge in a technicolor glow. He waited to see which would be the first throw a warning, but they continued uninterrupted through their startup sequences as the starship steadily returned to life.

"You said that you do hands-on training on the Odette II in-dock a couple times a year," Kane said to Jenny. She was hovering over the captain's chair with her eyes fixed on a console, Marika next to her running through a series of checks. "Is it always like this when you bring the ship back online?"

Marika and Jenny both looked at each other and burst out laughing.

"We would always leave the old systems how they were, without connecting to any external networks," Jenny explained through her laughter. "Since the ship stayed in dock the entire time during training, it didn't matter if everything was out of date. If we're getting a bit intense about everything, it's just because we need the Odette II to be working at peak efficiency when we take it into space. We want this trip to go as smoothly as possible."

The bridge was as noisy as the school cafeteria at lunchtime as the students began their rundown of the ship's systems.

"A bit intense," Kane murmured to himself. "Well, I'm glad that the ship's safety is your main concern," he said, turning from the chattering mob of students back to Marika. "But you're just students, you don't need to learn all of this."

"Train like it's the real thing. That's our club motto," Marika explained, hand on her hip and finger in the air. "It'll be good experience if any of us ever have to fly another ship, right?"

"I'm not sure that this is the kind of thing most of you will ever need to know in life."

"We've established a connection with the station! Station control's reported back confirming our ship's registration!"

As soon as the wired data connection came back online, several of the displays lit up with streams of important information. Jenny held a small wireless intercom up to her ear.

"This is Jenny Dolittle, president of the Hakuoh Girls' Academy yacht club, on the Odette II. I'm contacting you from the bridge of the Odette II, currently docked at dock C68."

"This is Umi-no-ake Station," came the curt, mechanical replay over the speaker. "Confirming the Odette II in dock. Is there anything we can be of assistance with?"

"Nothing major right now. We are currently preparing the Odette II for launch. We'll need the latest information on travel routes and advisories, as well as updated transmission codes."

"Roger, Odette II. Transmitting today's travel information and astronomical forecasts, as well as communication code protocols."

"Got it!" The transfer over the station's high-speed network completed almost instantaneously. The second-year in charge of communications called up the data from station control on her display. "Data confirmed! Today's travel information and the latest communication protocols."

"We've received the data. Thank you very much."

"Is there anything else we can help you with?"

"Not at the moment. We'll let you know if we need anything."

"Happy to help. We look forward to being of any assistance."

"Sir!" the student in charge of communications with dockside shouted. "It seems there's a dockworker here to see us."

"Understood." Numerous station workers were moving in and out of the docks. They had already scheduled the refilling of their propellant and reaction mass, so there were only a few options as to whom it could be. "Ask them to wait, I'll be right out."

Since the lights had just come on in the expensive dock, Kane thought that it might be a salesman trying to push disaster prevention systems, but he quickly rejected the idea. A prominent school like Hakuoh would have a list of people who were allowed in and out.

He returned dockside and headed to the control room, trading places with the student handling the power hookup, and waved to the jumpsuited worker.

"Hyakume, so it's you."

"Yo."

The thin man lifted the visor of his baseball cap and flashed a smile, his glass eye fixed on Kane. "I can't believe you get to work with all these girls. You enjoying yourself?"

"Don't even start. It's like I'm surrounded by a herd of the universe's deadliest creature," Kane answered, shooting a look around the bog-standard control room. "I switched off my recorder when we came in."

"Same," Hyakume said, making a show of tapping the recorder on his shoulder.

"So is this how we're supposed to communicate now, while we're away from our real jobs?"

"Business first. You need about ten tons of fresh water for the life support. You want that right away?"

"We just got in and turned the key, the supply line's probably not even hooked up yet." Kane ran his fingers across the console in the dockside control room. "Well well, I thought they were just there for show, but it turns out the dock equipment and the service robots are top of the line too. This should be a cinch."

Kane pointed at the intercom still attached to his ear, signaling to Hyakume that he was about to send a message, and opened a channel.

"Odette II bridge, do you copy? This is Kane in the dockside control room."

"This is Jenny on the bridge," came the swift reply.

"I've got a man here to check your fluids."

"Excuse me?"

"Pardon me, what I mean is that our water hookup is here. I thought we could get the life support system topped off and make sure that it's working like it's supposed to."

"Give us a moment to prepare."

"Get ready. And make sure that the line to the water tank is open."

"Understood. Marika, do you know how to connect the water line? Good, thanks. I believe we're ready to fill it up."

"Okay, we'll connect the line from here using the arm." Kane reached for the console that would automatically connect the pipes and cords and groaned. "This whole thing's automatic, from start to finish!"

"That's normal, isn't it?" Marika's voice chirped from the intercom. Kane frowned.

"A normal robot arm would make you set its position, connect the line, and verify it manually."

Kane's role was finished as soon as he had input the command.

"And the whole point is that it's something you should be able to do during an EVA, in a space suit. Having to use a pressurized dock on a ship this size every time you want to refuel or load cargo would bankrupt you."

"Huh, is that so?" Marika replied, oblivious. "Automatically connecting the line."

The crane arm tracked along the wall of the dock, grabbed the bundle of various-sized tubes that made up the supply line, and attached them to a universal connector. After both the dock and the ship confirmed that the connection had been made, high pressure nitrogen was flushed through to purge the system and ensure that it was airtight.

After the seal was verified and no anomalies were detected with the nitrogen gas, it would automatically begin another series of sanitizing blasts of air. If no physical obstructions were were detected within the sealed system, it would then begin to pump the water.

"Life support system functioning normally. Continuing sanitization."

Kane watched the sequence scroll across the display unprompted and shook his head.

"What a rip, systems like this are going to make humans obsolete."

Marika, listening on the other side of the intercom, laughed at his grumbling.

"It's not funny. Old ships require a lot of work, and we're talking about giving a bunch of beginners a rickety old solar sailer. If you can't even do something like resupply by yourself, how can you say you really understand the ship?"

"The Odette II is the only ship we understand," Marika replied, still laughing, over the intercom. "If you think it's something we need to know, then why don't you teach it to us? Sir."

This time it was Hyakume, listening in on their conversation, who had to stifle his laughter. Kane watched the display as it cycled through its steps and tapped the intercom in his hear.

"Let everyone there know that starships have only ever flown on manpower. Kane out."

Hyakume waited for the bridge to cut the transmission before he burst out laughing.

"Seems I misjudged you. You sound like a wonderful teacher blessed with some excellent students."

"If everything goes according to plan, that student's going to be our new boss," Kane said, pointing at the intercom. "That was Katou Marika, Gonzaemon's daughter and the heir to the Bentenmaru and his letter of marque."

"That was her?" Hyakume tried to match the voice he had just heard with the image of Marika he knew only from the photos in her dossier. "So what kind of a student is she?"

"The respectable, straight-A kind. Not what I was expected from all the gossip I heard about Captain Ririka—perfect attendance, hands in all her homework, does well on pop quizzes."

"Who was asking about her grades?" Hyakume stared at Kane with his expressionless glass eye. "You're the yacht club advisor, I want to know if she has what it takes to be captain."

Kane took a moment to think.

"When it comes to maneuvering a ship, she's surprisingly good. I don't know if it's something she got from Captain Ririka or something she learned herself, but she'll make a good pilot even if she doesn't come over to the dark side."

"That so? Never heard the Bentenmaru's ace pilot give praise so freely before."

"But you of all people know high scores and piloting skills don’t matter when it comes to being a captain."

"For us, it just comes down to blood, I guess." Hyakume gently tilted the visor of his baseball cap. "Unfortunately, nobody gets a choice about that. Can't complain though. If she's a good pilot, that means she knows how a ship moves, can visualize space. Hundred times more useful than some sheltered princess."

He stared out through the pressure-resistant glass at the dazzlingly white hull of the solar sailer.

"Even better, she's flying something from the same era as the Bentenmaru, and one of the Original Seven…hard to believe it's in this good of shape."

"About that," Kane said, turning to look at the ship himself. "You been able to find anything about the Odette II from back when it was the White Swan?"

"A bit." Hyakume tapped his temple through the beat up cap. "Hasn't been easy. The official records only have bits and pieces about piracy—most of the stories out there about famous, century-old pirate ships are pure fabrication. Separating the myth from the real was a job in itself."

"So you did manage to find something worthwhile, then."

Hyakume smiled and nodded. "Something. According to the records, eighty percent of the ship's raids were surprise attacks. Get close enough that they don't see you, knock out their comms, then take control of the ship. It's a smart approach, could be in the textbooks."

"With this thing?" Kane pointed at the solar sailer in front of them. "Even the smallest solar sailer is going to have a huge profile, how do you even begin to think about sneaking up on someone?"

"I thought it was strange too, but the logs of one of the freighters it hit had it all written down in detail. Sure, the ship’s sails are huge, but compared to similarly classed ships the hull is thinner and lighter. 'Cause if you're not going to be using your drives, you're at the mercy of solar rays and radiation, and you want to be as light as possible."

"But it was preying on interstellar freighters. You're telling me the old freighters couldn't see this thing coming?"

"That's not it." Hyakume shook his head. "Detection methods back then weren't much different than what we have now—a mix of radar, electronic, visual, gravitational sensors. And how do you make something's radar signature as small as possible?"

"By making the part of you facing the target as small as possible," Kane answered. It was the textbook response. "That’s rule one in our line of work."

"Right. And the White Swan was successful by sticking to the fundamentals. This ship starts to look pretty thin when you retract the transit masts, don't you think?"

Hyakume sketched the elongated cone shape of the solar sailer's hull in the air with this finger.

"Point the bow directly at the freighter you want to take and you can minimize your radar signature. Apparently, back when it was a pirate ship, the White Swan—despite its name—went so far as to coat its hull with an illegal, radar-absorbing black paint."

"I guess it doesn't matter if you're breaking the law when you're already at war. But if you're pointed directly at your target, you can't get close to them unless you're directly behind them."

"There's the trick," Hyakume said, pointing through the window at the ship. "A solar sailer doesn't have any propellant putting off an infrared signature, it can approach its target from an angle."

"Aha!"

Kane grasped what Hyakume was saying. By catching the solar rays with its sail, the ship could move through space on a different trajectory than it would by using its drives, which were installed inline with the bow. And if it approached from the direction of the sun, it would even avoid wasting any of the reflected solar rays. A solar sailer was at its most effective when positioned at an angle relative to the direction it was traveling.

"I get it now. But it seems easier said than done. You need to be incredibly precise to pull off the approach and attack."

"Here's the thing, apparently they were incredibly precise. If they weren't, they never would have kept up with the more forceful pirates, or survived through the end of the war."

"It's a good strategy, but what did they do for weapons?" Kane had seen signs in the records of the White Swan being modified for electronic warfare and having its power systems upgraded. The increase in power output and the additional supply conduits beyond what was needed for a civilian ship could only point to the addition of a beam cannon. But no matter how many augmentations they made to it, he knew that the threat posed by a solar sailer was limited. "Where did their real force come from?"

"That’s the amazing part. They did add an anti-ship beam that they could use to fire warning shots, and occasionally take out antennas, but most of the time it was just icing on the cake. Not that it counted for nothing in the middle of a war, but they didn't bust it out unless it was going to help increase the take."

Kane looked confused. "So what did they use, then?"

"Missiles," Hyakume answered simply. "The White Swan would read their target's course and plant missiles at the point where they planned to intercept."

"That makes things even more complicated."

Thinking about how much planning had gone into one of the White Swan's raids sent chills down Kane's spine.

Placing remote-operated missiles on the battlefield beforehand would have allowed the ship to respond to changing situations with the same capacity as a warship, capable of firing its missiles at any time. A multi-missile launcher with the safeties disabled would give them a degree of combat readiness without even the need to be present at the launch point.

"It may be complicated, but it wasn’t bad in terms of effectiveness. As far as disposable weapons go, a guided anti-ship missile is as expensive as you can get. The best ones cost more than a low-end fighter. If you place them ahead of time you can recover and reuse them later. Good for threats or an ambush."

"Sure, but you need to make sure you've got them in exactly the right spot."

Designed to be disposable, missiles did not have a particularly long range. It was a different story if you added boosters or drop tanks, but otherwise changing the area of engagement meant you had to change the placement of the missiles as well. A missile bereft of fuel would simply continue to drift, useless.

"If something goes wrong, it'll take that much more time to recover the missiles, right?"

"Still cheaper than wasting them. Plus, and this is just a guess, what if they started deploying decoys instead of real missiles, and used them as a bluff after people came to know what to expect?"

It wasn't uncommon for pirates to put their names out there and work on reputation alone.

"You think a bluff is enough to get a freighter to surrender in the middle of a war?"

"Even if it's not, you can't capture as many ships as they did without a good number of fights under your belt. You won't last long as a pirate if you sink everything you go after, but you also can't just let them all escape either. A pirate wants their target to surrender without having to use force—that bit’s never changed—and it seems that the White Swan excelled at that sort of ploy."

"I'll bet the ship makes for a fine transport, even if it's not a raider."

The console announced that the pressurized nitrogen purge was complete. It automatically began piping in the water.

"It even starts the flow rate off low to check for problems before ramping it up. These machines really do want to make people obsolete."

"The high-end ports are all like this these days," Hyakume said, a wistful look in his eye. "We'd never see one, not with the money we make, but it's the norm for fancy warships and passenger vessels."

"This is a training ship, they should be doing everything by hand."

Kane activated the intercom. He was going to inform Marika that the life support water tanks were starting to fill, and to keep her eyes on the system. For long voyages they needed to be at capacity, but today they were only going to test the system, and weren't planning on filling the tanks more than was required for their short voyage.

"Bringing a ship out of a twenty year mothball, upgrading its systems and databanks, refilling our water, food, and other supplies, taking a bunch of scrubs out on a flight—it's bad enough without having to worry about everything else going on."

Kane glanced at the screen that showed the status of the Odette II's major systems.

"So, what happened? They quit being pirates, changed their designation from converted cruiser to training vessel, and stripped out all the weapons?"

"Probably."

Kane furrowed his brow. It was a hard story to swallow.

"Weren't you able to get any info from the suppliers who did the actual maintenance?"

"Oh, the information is there. The question is whether or not you can trust it. Do you just believe everything you hear without confirming it for yourself?"

"Depends. Believability aside, what did you learn?"

"As it stands, the Odette II isn't currently equipped with any missiles, mines, mass drivers, or the magazines for them."

"And what makes that so hard to believe?"

"The cyberwarfare system from its pirating days is still active—or at least there's no sign that it or the fire control system were ever removed. You know how I said they would deploy missiles beforehand and operate them remotely? There were no launchers, they just opened up the cargo bay doors, placed them using the robot arm, and that was it. So the control systems they used to guide them are probably still there.”

Accurately targeting missiles and beams at fast-moving targets in ship-to-ship combat required high-powered, high-definition radar and sensors beyond what any civilian vessel needed.

"I wonder if they were planning on selling it to the military as a trainer after the war."

"It's the only reason I can think of for keeping such expensive equipment. These high-tech electronics are worth more than the hull itself is now, let alone how much they must have cost at the time."

"If they even still work…" Kane made a mental list of the various pieces of equipment that he had seen while he had been inspecting the outside of the ship. "So even though it may not have any direct fire weapons, it still has the equivalent of a warship's electronic warfare suite."

"I can't tell you if it works or not, but it's definitely there. I just have no clue if the delicate electronics were maintained, or if they were just left to rust."

"If they’re still getting updates, they might be considered top of the line." Kane recalled the various terminals on the bridge springing back to life. "Not that I think those kids could even handle them. It’s just the electronics though; without any real weapons installed, I shouldn't have to worry I'm letting them play with matches."

Hyakume pointed the display on his shoulder pack towards Kane.

"Sign that you received the delivery."

"Yessir." Kane glanced at the receipt. "What about payment?"

"Said they charge the school for it directly. Just send 'em a bill at the end of each year. Anything you need—something replaced, spare parts, food, fuel—just order it."

"Not sure what we'll need, but I left provisions and other necessities up to the students."

Kane took the light pen and signed off as a teacher.

"I'll let you know."

With the help of a not-unexpected schedule extension, they somehow managed to complete all of the tasks that had been planned for the first day of work. Still moored in dock C68, the Odette II was connected to external power, the systems necessary for maintenance brought back online, its software brought up to date, and its hardware put through its paces.

In order to ensure that the life support system was functioning properly, it needed to be filled with water and ran for twenty-four hours. With their test flight planned for only a short length, even if a problem with the life support were to arise, it might not become an impediment to the flight.

As part of their training and in keeping with the club motto—train like it's the real thing—the Hakuoh Girls Academy yacht club would spend the night on the Odette II.

Using ingredients both brought up from the surface and purchased on the station, they prepared dinner in the ship's galley and shared it in the ship's mess, followed by a bit of free time before retiring to their cabins to sleep.

They also prepared duty shifts as if they were already in flight. Even while docked the ship's systems were still active, and it was possible that they could receive messages from station control. They drew lots to determine who would man the bridge overnight, in pairs, in four-hour shifts.

In dock and running on external power, the bridge stations were nonetheless fully active, watched over beginning at midnight by two freshmen chosen at random. Katou Marika and Chiaki Kurihara.

"Ya know…"

Perhaps owing to its lineage as a training vessel, the two concentric rings that made up the disc-shaped bridge of the Odette II were rather cramped. Even so, with only two students to man the fully active systems, it felt empty.

"Doesn't this seem kinda suspicious?" Marika called out from the navigator's station as she finished up the periodic automatic internal and external scans of the ship. Chiaki sat two seats away, at the communications station, expressionless as she ran her fingers across the control panel.

Marika waited for a reply before she spoke up again.

"I mean don't you think it's kinda weird? That two freshmen end up on watch the first night?"

"And that one of them is a transfer student, and new to the club?" Chiaki said, speaking for the first time since they had taken watch. "I didn't have anything to do with it."

The lots to determine who was on duty were drawn randomly by computer. The program was supposedly random and fair, but there were still countless ways that the results could have been manipulated.

"Maybe it was Kane…"

Marika stared at the numerical keypad used for internal communications, set into the corner of the control panel. Kane MacDougal should have been sleeping in the captain's quarters, per yacht club tradition.

"And it's not like you really need someone to take watch when you're in dock, right? I think they're just trying to get us used to manning the bridge while nothing's going on."

Chiaki checked the monitor that displayed the Odette II's current position.

The station was located in an orbit geosynchronous with a point south of Shin Okuhama. According to the data provided by the station, the Odette II's position was slowly changing in tandem with the rotation of Umi-no-ake itself.

"Modern ships have full autopilots, they can navigate and even dock without anyone doing anything, do they really think we’re ever going to have to sit watch?"

"That may be the case with a cruiser where you only have your family and friends on board, but this is a training vessel, and we have enough crew to staff it."

With the entire yacht club participating in the training camp, there were sufficient hands to fill every position on the Odette II.

"Maybe the point is to get us used to Galactic Standard Time?"

Marika took a look at the energy usage for the cabins the students were using. Several of them seemed to still be awake. Regulations demanded that intergalactic starships operate according to Galactic Standard Time. Obviously the standard was different from the planetary time they used in Shin Okuhama.

"It’s not like we can just expect other ships we meet to adjust to our frame of reference."

Marika stole a glance at Chiaki two seats away.

"Do pirate ships operate on Galactic Standard Time too?"

There was just enough time for Chiaki to sigh before she answered.

"Why wouldn’t they? I can't think of any merit to intentionally using a different time frame than the rest of the galaxy."

"I guess that makes sense…hey, what is that you're doing?"

Chiaki's fingers were moving across the control panel too quickly for normal monitoring duties. Again she hesitated before answering.

"Outside the ship," she said without looking at Marika, her eyes fixed on the display. "There are a lot of connections trying to break in."

"Huh?"

"The antennas are still active even though we're docked, and we have the datalink running. We're connected to the network, we're getting lots of cyberattacks."

"Wait, do you mean," Marika asked, her voice rising as she caught Chiaki's meaning, "that someone is trying to hack the Odette II!?"

Chiaki thought for a moment, then nodded.

"I guess you could say that."

"From where!? By who!? Why would anyone target a training ship for a bunch of high school girls!?"

"It would be too much work to figure out who they are and where they're from. It's not worth making a fuss over, so far the attacks have only been automated bots and malicious spam. But still…"

"Oh, so that's what you meant by 'cyberattack.'" Marika breathed a sigh of relief. "Those sorts of things are common on the terrestrial net too. The Odette II's main computer's firewall should be able to handle them, shouldn't it?"

"Hopefully," Chiaki said, strangely apprehensive. Marika looked at her.

"Is there something else?"

Chiaki shook her head softly.

"But the point of a cyberattack is to compromise the target's system before they've realized what's going on. I can't shake the feeling that this is just the start of an intrusion."

"So you were trying to do something about it…do you know who's doing it?"

"Like I said, finding out who's doing it and where they are would take too much work."

"Hmm."

Marika scanned the bridge. She recognized the captain's chair, communications, navigation, the helm, and engineering, but she didn't yet know all of the different bridge stations.

"Which one of these is cyberwarfare?"

"That one, I think," Chiaki said, pointing at the station located behind communications. It was a cluster of three seats surrounding an old-fashioned moveable display and an unfamiliar interface. A portion of the display was illuminated, but it was an unwritten rule of the yacht club to not touch anything that you didn't understand, and so no one had messed with the console.

Marika floated across the gravityless bridge and settled into the middle of the three seats tucked behind the communications station. She looked around the extensive interface—it felt too large for a single person to control alone—and what felt like an excessive number of screens.

"Do you know how to work it?"

"Not one bit," Marika answered. Chiaki looked back reflexively from her place at communications. "I think that originally this console used to be used for cyberwarfare. I wonder if it still works?"

She adjusted the position of the seat. Several pedals were aligned at her feet, though she could only guess at what they were used for.

"The protocols and bandwidth speeds might be different from how they were back then, but the principle is still the same…"

Chiaki lifted out of her seat at communications and glanced at what they believed was the cyberwarfare station. It didn't appear to use any modern holographic displays—all of the information looked to be presented on flat screens.

"This display," Marika said, pointing at one of the only active ones, on the left-hand side of the console. In total, the array of various-sized screens felt like they were bearing down on the seats. "It's the only one that seems to be responding to something, faintly."

Chiaki stared at the jagged red curve on the display as it periodically reacted to something, then back at the communications console where she had been sitting.

"It looks like it responds whenever we receive an external transmission. Nothing else seems to set it off though."

"External transmissions…" Marika looked across the array of unfamiliar screens and indicators. "From the antennas?"

This time Chiaki seemed perplexed.

"We're inside an enclosed dock. The only active antenna is for short-range communications. The main long-range antenna is supposed to be retracted, isn't it?"

"That would reduce its reception, but it could still pick up a signal. But if they're trying to break in using the hardline instead of the antenna…?"

"Then that means the attack isn't coming from another ship, but from somewhere on the station."

Chiaki floated back to the communications console. It would be easy to determine whether the external contacts were being made through the antenna or their datalink with the station.

The Odette II's highly sensitive antennas—both the fixed short-range antennas and the long-range antenna that was retracted along with the masts—were picking up signals on multiple frequencies. But their electronic reconnaissance system, capable of instantly parsing large swaths of communications data, was unable to detect any patterns that it recognized as a cyberattack.

Chiaki adjusted the filters to focus specifically on the data received through the hardline connection.

"Anything?" Marika asked casually from the cyberwarfare console. Chiaki's response was swift.

"Give me a minute! I'm not used to this sort of system!"

Chiaki opened up a help file—prepared by past students who had used the system—on one of the sub-monitors and began carefully isolating the incoming contacts.

After identifying the ships’ names and ID codes, she quickly found the names of the communications operators behind each signal. There was a stack of updates from station control—reports on nearby traffic, arrivals and departures, weather reports and the like.

Any automated broadcasts or announcements that were picked up by the communications system were treated as spam, regardless of when or where they were received. It was a haphazard collection of commercials for services and products legal and otherwise, no different from what would be found on a terrestrial network. Bargains on second-hand ships, illegal program updates—nothing that would be of any use to a group of high school girls on a training voyage.

After taking the time to filter out and block all of the useless data, Chiaki finally pinpointed the telltales of the transmission she was searching for.

"Found it!" she shouted. The transmission had been addressed specifically to the Odette II's identification code, a virus that had carefully established a connection without their notice and was then meant to delete itself and overwrite any records of what it had done.

"Do you know where they are?" Marika asked, at some point having slipped into the navigator's seat. Chiaki attempted to restore the deleted transmission data.

"I can retrace the comm route, but it's almost certainly forged."

“I’m looking at a list right now of ships docked at the station,” Marika said, reading off of the display from an angle. "There are a lot of ships stopped here, but not nearly as many that are actually in dock."

Umi-no-ake's way station wasn't huge, but it was large enough to be classified as a port city. The station possessed sealed docks as well as open berths within a pressurized air shield.

"Exactly how many is 'not nearly as many'!?"

"Three defense force escorts, one regularly scheduled passenger liner with another planning to dock soon, four shuttles and two sightseeing craft from the surface, and ten freighters of various sizes."

"How many ships are there in the downtown docking port?"

The quickly reconstructed data came with its transmission route appended to it. The intrusion directed at the Odette II in dock C68 had originated in the docking port on the station's lower half before being routed through the central server.

"The downtown docking port? Let me check."

Direct hardline connections to the station weren't limited to only those ships with enclosed berths. It was possible for passengers and small cargo to be offloaded at the docking port that surrounded the main shaft in the lower sections of the station, allowing access for freighters that didn't require sealed docking bays or entrance into the main port.

"The docking port has…fifteen ships!"

There were fifteen ships currently docked at the docking port off the main shaft that ran through the center of the station, with ships docked on either side of it. A defense force cruiser on port and starboard liberty, a deep space surveyor in for resupply, four private yachts and cruisers, and the rest a mix of large and medium-sized freighters, both high and low-speed.

"Freighters are the most common type of ship in existence, and the easiest to fake a registration for."

Chiaki called up the list of ships docked at the docking port on the communications console's subdisplay.

"So the attacker must be one of these?"

After tracing the signal to the docking port, it vanished into the interstellar hyperspace network. Chiaki had decided that that part was being spoofed by the intrusion protocol.

"Look for any ships that look suspicious!"

"How exactly am I supposed to tell if a ship looks suspicious!?"

"You can ignore chartered ships and any ships registered to large companies that make regular runs here. Keep an eye out for privately owned vessels, small and unfamiliar shipping companies, and any ship with a port of call that's absurdly far away!"

All of the information on the ships' registrations could easily be found through the station itself.

"Also, try to get visual data on them too!"

A ship's identification code included its model and classification, but no image.

"Um, maybe we could ask station control?"

"If we do that, we'll let on that we know we're being hacked. It'll be faster to use the external monitors, give me a second."

Chiaki searched through several different open channels before locating the one dedicated to the station's surveillance footage.

She quickly cycled through the different camera feeds—internal public areas, various piers, a shot of the planet below—before finally arriving at the view from the downtown docking port cameras.

"19 and 64 are both independent transports, but they're registered out of here. I've never heard of the company or planet affiliated with number 28…it says it's a factory ship?"

Factory ships are either ships capable of refining raw materials and manufacturing basic goods over the course of their long voyages, or mobile industrial plants that operate as factories when docked.

"What else!?"

"I'm not sure if it's suspicious or not, but 92 and 117 are both smaller ships with really old registrations!"

"Not as old as the Odette II, I bet," Chiaki muttered as she switched feeds to a camera focused on berth 92. It was a bog standard container ship.

"Can you find out its arrival and departure schedule?"

The cameras monitoring the sole docking port did not boast a wealth of security footage. Marika quickly came back with an answer.

"Berth 92, the 'City of Eileen,' docked yesterday, no scheduled departure time."

The container ship's systems were powered down, no light was visible from its windows, and its running lights were extinguished. Chiaki decided that the ship wasn't currently in service and switched camera feeds to berth 117.

"Whoa."

The display was filled with a shot of a high-speed transport, its windows and running lights fully lit. The hull appeared to be in dire need of maintenance, the multiple layers of paint and scorch marks creating the impression of a camouflage pattern.

"If anyone tried to hire this ship, they'd probably run screaming as soon as they saw it."

"Berth 117, the 'Lightning 11,' docked four days ago, also no scheduled departure time."

"That's probably it." Chiaki combined the various images from the security cameras into a single composite. "I wonder what that rust bucket is up to, hanging around with no planned departure."

"Which one?" Marika peered down at the monitor from behind Chiaki. "Whoa!" she exclaimed unexpectedly, as Chiaki gestured towards the screen showing the image of the Lightning 11 taken from the docking port's security cameras.

"It has too much comms equipment for such a busted up transport. A normal freighter wouldn't need this many antennas."

"What do you mean?"

"What I mean is that the bridge and the hull shouldn't have this many antennas attached to them just for normal communications. Only e-war ships need that many antennas—what else would you need that much transmitting power for?"

"I've never seen an electronic warfare ship before." Marika pouted and flitted back to the cyberwarfare station. "Do you know how it works?"

"What do you mean?"

"Cyberwarfare."

Chiaki spun around in her seat to look at Marika.

"You can't be serious!"

"The Odette II is being attacked, right? It would only be polite to try and put up a proper defense."

Chiaki stared intently back at Marika.

"Do you even know anything about cyberwarfare?"

"I don't. But the Odette II has the equipment for it, even if it's old. If we can get it running, then we can fight back, right?"

"Do you have any idea what would happen if we tried to use cyberwarfare equipment inside a sealed dock!? Normal radar is powerful enough to fry someone to death if it hits them!"

"We only have to boot up the computer. The antenna is retracted and can't be extended while we're docked, and I doubt it would even be able to reach someone docked on the main shaft from here anyway."

Marika pushed back the seat and searched the control panel for the main power switch, thinking it might be tucked away somewhere underneath.

"How powerful of an EM pulse are you planning of using!?"

"If they're attacking us over a wired connection, then can't we counterattack over the same connection?"

Chiaki watched Marika slide the seat forward into operating position and turned back to communications console.

"You can probably set it up to do so, but I don't think hacking them is going to be easy for someone who has no idea what she's doing!"

"Well then what am I supposed to do?"

Chiaki could feel Marika staring at her and turned around.

"If the Odette II really is being attacked, then the safest course of action would be to cut the connection; we could say that we were rebooting the communications system or resetting the link with the central server. If we tell Kane tomorrow I'm sure he'll know how to deal with it. But if we really are being targeted, unless we fight back, unless we let them know we mean business, won't they just try the same thing again?"

Chiaki stared at Marika for a moment.

"You're the senior officer here, so what you say goes."

She turned back towards the monitor in front of her, her lips unconsciously curling into a smile.

"The senior officer? What are you talking about?"

"You've been in the yacht club longer than I have, that means I have to follow your orders."

Chiaki scanned the control panel, isolated the external cable connection, and locked it. She was hoping to avoid accidentally activating any of the external antennas, but unsure of whether that was enough to avoid other systems taking precedence, she may have accomplished little more than peace of mind. The attack on the main computer, disguised as a spam broadcast, was still under way.

"I know I already said this, but keep in mind that I'm just a novice when it comes to cyberwarfare."

Chiaki smoothly lifted out of her seat at the communications console and floated backwards toward the cyberwarfare station.

"I also have no idea how this ship's system works, or what will happen if we use it."

"I'm the senior officer, I'm the one responsible, right?" Marika smiled as Chiaki took a seat beside her.

"Okay then, booting up the Odette II's cyberwarfare system."

Marika pushed her seat back, flipped the lever hidden underneath the control panel, and one by one began turning on the main switches that were spread across the three-seat electronic weapons console.

Power coursed through the Odette II's cyberwarfare system for the first time in years. The console's displays sprang to life one after another where only a single submonitor had been illuminated before, and unfamiliar systems began to show activity and run automatic checks.

"It looks like everything's working like it’s supposed to."

Chiaki watched as some of the displays established links to other parts of the ship and confirmed their current status. "Even basic cyberwarfare isn't really something a beginner can stumble their way through. If we can't figure it out, we can still feign ignorance and cut the power."

"Do you think that’s safe?" Marika scanned the complex system as it flashed various diagrams and activation processes, her face wearing a look of concern even as she continued to flip switches. "I feel like if we shut something this complicated down on our own, we might break something."

"I don't think something so fragile would be of much use in a fight."

Chiaki cast a glance back at the communications console and let out a shriek.

"No way! It's transmitting on its own!?"

"Huh?"

Marika jumped out of her seat at the cyberwarfare console to stare down at the communications console's control panel. The Odette II was quickly establishing an increasing number of external connections.

"What's it sending? Where's it connecting to!?"

"How should I know!?"

Chiaki was about to return to the communications station, but instead she switched the feed on one of the displays in front of her. Tapping away by guesswork at the cyberwarfare console's control panel, it seemed that she had managed to work out some of the controls.

"It appears to be connecting to some sort of database…the defense force’s records department!?"

Cycling rapidly through the display feeds, Chiaki could hardly believe her eyes when the logo flashed in front of her.

"Hold on, where is this damn computer getting its data from!?"

Instinctively she tried to cancel the data transfers, but they were happening too quickly to stop.

She watched while the system downloaded a massive amount of data through the high-speed link to the station, when suddenly the cyberwarfare console began to flash alarmingly.

"Huh? What's happening?"

Marika stared at the screens in a panic, the words "automatic countermeasures" blinking repeatedly as the displays rapidly cycled through various diagrams.

"This is bad!"

Chiaki reached for the power switch on the underside of the console.

"I don't know if it's using its previous settings or what, but it's starting an attack on its own. Stop it!"

"Wait!"

Marika grabbed Chiaki by the shoulder.

"We booted this thing up to try and hack them, if it's going to do it on its own we might as well let it."

"We don't understand the system, we don't know who it's attacking—are you saying we should just sit here and watch quietly!? If we're not careful it could get us in trouble with station control!"

"It'll be fine."

Marika gestured at the communications console monitor that displayed the status of the Odette II's wired connection.

"The download's finished, now the only thing active is a one-way connection with the downtown docking port. The system must have realized it was under attack and defended itself."

"They make cyberwarfare systems that aware and easy to use!?"

The lights that had been illuminating the bridge began to flicker, and then were suddenly extinguished. Marika and Chiaki stared at each other, their faces lit only by the disorientingly vacillating displays of the cyberwarfare console.

Marika couldn't help but laugh.

"Did, uh, did something happen?"

"You moron!" Chiaki berated her, flying towards the engineering station. Some of the displays and control panels had lost power, but the lively dazzle of the cyberwarfare station's displays was sufficient to show it was still functioning.

"Our energy consumption is spiking!" Chiaki reported after looking at the engineering station's displays. Without the Odette II's primary generator active, the station only needed to monitor the external power connection. "The cyberwarfare equipment must consume a huge amount of power. We're not getting enough, it had to cut power to the other systems!"

"But that means…" Marika looked around the bridge, lit only by the light from the displays. "The rest of the ship…"

A loud thud echoed from somewhere. One by one the rest of the displays began to die out, plunging the bridge into darkness.

"A blackout," Marika heard Chiaki say as the emergency lighting activated, faintly illuminating the corridors of the ship. "The sudden surge in power must have tripped a breaker dockside."

Marika stood up from her seat at the cyberwarfare console.

"We need to go and reset it."

"Cut the power to the cyberwarfare station first!" Chiaki smoothly lifted out of her seat at the engineering station. "If we leave that power hog running the same thing will just happen again."

Surprisingly, the effects of the tripped power breaker extended even beyond the confines of the Odette II itself. Marika and Chiaki exited the ship's open port side cargo bay door to find that the entirety of dock C68’s lights were extinguished, the berth illuminated only by the pale green emergency lighting.

Marika floated across the zero gravity dock to the control room where she reset the automatic breaker, restoring power to dock C68 and the Odette II.

Outside the control room, the bright lights sprang back to life inside the solar sailer's enclosed mooring.

"I wonder if the lights came back on inside too?" Marika asked, concerned.

"Probably," Chiaki answered, searching the control room for the status of the power uplink. She pointed at one of the displays. "It says energy transfer to the ship is normal. But look at this. Just before the blackout, the amount of energy jumped to five times its normal level. Unless you're starting up the main engine, a sudden surge like that is going to trip the safety breaker."

"I guess we'll need to increase the capacity next time." Marika began fiddling with the controls.

"What are you doing?"

"I want to see what happened to the ship in 117, the Lightning 11."

Checking the docking information from station control would be quicker than searching through the security camera footage. The data appeared in front of Marika, and the field listing the Lightning 11's status, which should have been blank, had updated to "Preparing for departure."

"I guess they're in a hurry to get out of here?"

Chiaki giggled.

"Seems the counterattack worked?"

"We won't know until we can get back to the bridge and see if we're still receiving any strange signals."

Chiaki noticed a figure standing in the open port side cargo bay door.

"You should come up with some excuse for Kane for the unscheduled blackout."

"Aw geez, did we wake him up?"

Marika took control of the dock's monitoring camera and focused it on the figure standing in the cargo bay door. Kane, clad in overalls, waved casually back at the camera. Behind him stood the silhouettes of several other students who were also now awake.

"It’s well past lights out, but I guess not everyone went to bed. The breaker's flipped, power's back to normal, let's head back and come up with an excuse."

Marika and Chiaki returned from the control room to the cargo bay door and greeted Kane and the club members who had been awoken by the sudden power outage.

"What happened?"

"I'm so sorry!" Marika said, her hands pressed together in apology. "I got bored during watch so I flipped the switch on the cyberwarfare console to see what would happen, and I guess it started sucking all the power!"

"Just flipping the switch shouldn't consume enough power to trip the breaker," Jenny said, suspicious. Kane turned to ask her a question.

"Have you ever tried to use the cyberwarfare equipment while the ship was in dock?"

"No, but we did at least confirm that it works. We switched it on after severing the connection from the station to make sure we didn't accidentally damage anything," Jenny said, waving her hands frantically in front of her. "Nobody in the club even knows anything about cyberwarfare. When we turned it on it seemed to automatically connect to somewhere and start downloading something, but nobody really knows how it works."

Marika shot Chiaki a stealth glance.

"Understood. For now at least it doesn't look like it had any effect on the station. Marika and Chiaki, return to your posts. But I want you to spend the rest of your watch making sure that all of the bridge stations have returned to normal operations."

"What!?" Marika shouted.

"Cutting power to the ship means that obviously some of its systems underwent a forced shutdown. We have backup power, so I doubt that any of the damage was catastrophic. But if you do find any errors, don't try to fix them, just leave them as they are for now."

"We can at least run a diagnostic."

"Also, don't mess with the cyberwarfare system."

Marika and Chiaki nodded in unison.

"I'll inspect the ship again when I wake up, to assess what effect the power outage had. There will be no changes to the schedule for tomorrow, so everyone go back to bed."

Kane clapped his hands together and the students retreated to their quarters, even while some raised their voices in protest.

"So, did you really just turn it on because you were curious?"

Chiaki glanced at Marika before stepping forward.

"You can check the logs if you like. However, since the sudden power surge tripped the breaker, there may not be any useful records left."

Kane looked at the two of them for a moment before finally nodding.

"Understood. Perhaps I’ll do that. Now, I hope both of you will stay alert for the rest of your shift."

"So, what happened?" Kane asked. He had returned to the captain's quarters and opened a connection to somewhere outside the ship.

"It seems that there was another ship attempting to mess with the Odette II while it was in dock," Hyakume answered. He was monitoring the Odette II, as well as the area surrounding the station, around the clock.

"Didn’t surprise to us. Hacking a two-bit rig like that is child's play for anyone in our line of work. If there’s anything to be worried about, it'll be because a couple of high school girls on the Odette II noticed and launched a counterattack."

"So our girl and the transfer student managed to hack them on their own?"

"No, based on the response I'd be hard pressed to say that they did it themselves. As far as we understand, the cyberwarfare system automatically downloaded some information from a military database, updated itself, and began a scan."

"What was it downloading from a military database!?"

"Publicly available data on electronic warfare. Nothing that would be of any use to us—the updates are too far behind the curve—but it's enough for peaceful civilian ships to keep their security tight. During a rapid scan of the ship's systems, the cyberwarfare equipment checked the ship's open connections, became aware of an ongoing cyberattack being conducted over the hardline connection, and engaged countermeasures."

Kane shook his head at the voice-only communication.

"You're saying that the cyberwarfare system was able to initialize an attack after simply being booted up? Who sets something to do that? Anyway, what was the outcome?"

"We weren't monitoring the connection on-station so I can't say for sure, but I assume that it traced the intrusion protocol back to its source and launched a brute-force attack on them"

"And that was what suddenly spiked the ship's power consumption?"

Normally a docked ship was supplied with only as much energy as it would need to start its engines. A typical ship would be hard pressed to trip a breaker, even with all of its systems active.

"Why would they keep such a powerful cyberwarfare system installed on a ship meant to act as a training vessel?"

"Don't forget that it used to be a pirate ship, just like ours."

Hyakume laughed from the other side of the call.

"Seems like you’ve got your work cut out for you, teach'. Now you're gonna have to start lecturing them on all the basics of flying and cyberwarfare."

"Gimme a break. What good would it do to teach the ABCs of hacking to a bunch of rich high school girls?"

"If you don't, the same thing could end up happening again. Besides, I thought you said the Hakuoh yacht club was a splendid group of girls?"

Kane breathed a heavy sigh.

"They haven't let up on me since before we left. It's a nightmare. Anyway, did you see what happened to the other ship?"

"We had no reason to have it under surveillance, but we were able to keep tabs on it afterward. It's the Lightning 11, a high-speed transport that was docked at the downtown docking port. Registered to Far East Galactic Shipping, out of West Kyria—the company only exists on paper, and all you need to register a ship out there is to pay a fee, no inspection required, and that's assuming the registration is even real."

"Did you find out who they are?"

"Maybe getting hit with a counterattack from a docked training ship spooked them, but they jumped port like someone lit a fire under their ass. We're looking at whatever data trail they left behind, but I don't know how far we’ll get."

"Were they after our girl, or the ship?"

"Couldn't tell ya. They only got up to no good once the Odette II was powered back up, but I doubt we'll really know until we can find out who was behind it all. You don't remember ever making the passenger manifest public, do you?"

"Nope."

"Even so, if someone were to hijack the ship carrying the Bentenmaru's next captain, I'm sure they could start a mess of trouble."

"You think we're gonna see even more of this crap?" Kane breathed an even heavier sigh. "Fine, see if you can up the ship's power supply. I don't want to have to deal with more blackouts every time someone tries to mess with us."

Marika and Chiaki spent the rest of their watch ensuring that the Odette II was still running properly in spite of the unexpected loss of power. It appeared that the backup batteries, which had started recharging as soon as the power line had been connected, had succeeded in averting the worst of the damage to the systems.

"So you're just not going to tell them?" Chiaki asked. "That someone tried to hack us, that you hacked them back, that that's why the ship lost power?"

"…"

The rest of the club members had returned to their quarters. Marika sat in the captain's chair on the bridge, thinking in silence.

"You think they'll try to hack us again?"

"I don't know. Offense isn't my specialty," Chiaki answered, making sure that there were no problems with the life support system following its automatic restart. "But hacking attempts aren't uncommon, out here in space. Stuff like spam advertising is annoying but harmless, and even outside of battles there are people who try to take control of your ship and lure you to overpriced service stations. Without good security, your ship can be done for just like that."

"It's lawless," Marika mumbled, and Chiaki cracked a smile. "Sounds like fun."

"There's nothing fun about it!"

Marika stopped suddenly in the middle of inspecting the attitude control system for bugs.

"But I'm sure Kane would teach us everything there is to know about it."

"About what?"

"Cyberwarfare. Hacking."

Chiaki watched Marika in the captain's chair from her place at the internal systems monitoring station. Marika gave her a stealthy thumbs up.

"We got lucky this time. Don't you think it would be better if next time we knew what we were doing?"

Three days later the Odette II departed from Umi-no-ake station, carrying supplies, a licensed captain, and their own qualified ship's physician.

Chapter 4: The Far Side of the Sun

The chaos on the bridge of the Odette II continued unabated from early in the morning on its day of departure.

"Breakaway confirmed by Umi-no-ake station control!"

"We've broken escape velocity, switching our positioning system from planetary to solar coordinates."

After using its primary drives to exit dock C68, the Odette II departed from Umi-no-ake's planetary system on a course that was plotted for them by station control. The station's zone of control extended to the edge of the planet's gravity well, the point where the solar system's star, Tau Ceti, began to exert a larger gravitational influence.

After gaining enough velocity to escape the planetary zone, the Odette II cut its main drives and used its inertia to enter into an interplanetary orbit.

According the flight plan filed with station control, the Odette II was to make a single orbit around the Tau Ceti star before returning to the station. The apex of its orbit would skirt the innermost of the system's planets, Suna-no-aka.

At its closest point to the star, the Odette II would be exposed to four hundred times the amount of thermal radiation as in orbit around Umi-no-ake—still well within acceptable levels, and the amount of solar rays absorbed by the ship would allow it to reach close to the maximum speeds achievable by a solar sailer.

"Wow, their flight plan even went so far as to include calculations for the orbital speed of the station."

While regulations stipulated that the ship have a captain on board, they were not so specific as to designate where the captain had to be. Jenny had occupied the captain's chair since morning; Kane was seated next to her in the first officer's station, comparing their current position with the projections made in the flight plan. Thanks to all the time they had taken up on launching and then in leaving their orbital transfer in the hands of station control, they were a fair bit behind schedule.

"I thought that we padded the schedule enough that we could take it easy, but I guess we’ll still manage somehow."

A circuitous route from a habitable zone planet to its star and back would take a modern non-FTL Category II starship half a day if it were to hurry. If they were to entrust the entire flight save for launching and docking to the sails as was planned, it would be almost impossible to stick to the flight plan.

"On the other hand, we should be able to complete the trip while only using about two percent of the energy that any other ship of the same class would," Jenny said, idly reviewing the process for deploying the sails. "I'm sure you can see the advantage in that."

"You also need to consider the extra workload," Kane said with a frown. He brought up an image of their route on the display in front of him, overlaid onto a map of the solar system. Ever since deciding that they would spend their summer break taking the Odette II on a training cruise, the yacht club members had invested all of their effort into assembling the plan.

"Once you factor in the need to decelerate on the return trip, the changes in solar radiation pressure, and the effects of gravity, it's enough to make someone want to cry." Kane briefly allowed himself to speak freely before returning to a more teacherly tone. "Modern starships wouldn't even consider an orbital trajectory, they'd just brute force it both ways."

"True, and that was actually our original plan as well."

Even by modern standards the Odette II's drives were just barely powerful enough to make an interplanetary voyage.

"But when we looked over the logs from previous club members, we found that they had all used the sails. If all you want to do is fly normally, there's no point in taking the Odette II."

"I suppose so. I doubt you'll get many chances to fly a solar sailer this size," Kane said, agreeing with the club president's view. "With less power and the need to remain focused on the sun, you can't get away with ignoring your surroundings while you navigate. That's a valuable skill to have in space, you're lucky to get this chance."

"So now that we're out of the range of station control, I was thinking it would be a good experience for us to try and deploy the masts."

"As long as there are no other nearby ships to get in the way, go right ahead."

After using the radar and a transponder check to ensure that the surrounding area was clear of any ships whose orbits might intersect with or draw too close to their own, the Odette II began to deploy its masts.

The Odette II had a barque-style configuration, a spindle-shaped hull with sets of three masts set into three separate orientations, nine total in all. Like the oceangoing barques of old, they retained the labels of foremast, mainmast, and mizzenmast.

The three foremasts, which had been retracted into the forwardmost part of the ship, were the first to be raised. Although constructed of ultra-lightweight materials, they were nonetheless massive and needed to be deployed simultaneously, each one spaced evenly a hundred and twenty degrees apart—trying to raise each mast individually would upset the ship's center of mass and cause it to veer off course.

The only way to follow the masts' deployment was by using the ship's external cameras and the holographic display located on the bridge. They slowly spread outward in three directions until reaching the designated angle of eighty-five degrees, and gently came to a halt.

The second-years occupying the three sail operators' seats, located along the outer ring of the bridge next to the engineering station, announced that the foremasts had been successfully raised, and started to extend the masts and deploy the yards.

The foremasts—shortest of the three sets of masts—were raised, extended, and their yards deployed without incident. Next they began the deployment process for the mainmasts, which were the longest and most complex.

However, the mast operators' console on the main bridge quickly reported a problem.

"What’s going on?"

On a typical starship, Kane would have been confident that the information relayed to the first officer's display was sufficient for him to understand the situation. But this was his first time on this vessel, his first time in command, and his only knowledge of solar sailers had come from some last minute cramming of the basics. He moved to the sail operators' console in the outer ring, examining their displays for more detailed information.

"Apparently some of the upper yards were already partially deployed before we tried to raise the masts," the second-year student in charge of the mainmasts explained, pointing at the visual from the external monitor and the composite image displayed on the screen. "It seems that the upper yards of the twelve o'clock and four o'clock mainmasts are caught on each other."

The external camera panned from the successfully deployed foremasts to show the prematurely and partially extended mainmast yards tangled up with those of its one hundred and twenty degree displaced partner.

The masts needed to all be deployed simultaneously in order to avoid disrupting the ship's facing. When the system dedicated to raising the masts detected the snag, it automatically halted their deployment.

Unlike the sailing ships of old, the masts and sails of a solar sailer were all controlled automatically. The display in front of the mainmast operator was filled with open help files, and she appeared to already be in the midst of attempting the standard procedures to restart the process.

"So they're too entangled to return to their original positions?" Kane confirmed. "And the automatic controller can't do anything about it?"

"The only thing left is to disable the safeties and try to force them into place, but we won't know if that'll fix it until we actually try…"

"Worst case scenario if we do?"

"A third of the yards on the twelve o'clock and four o'clock masts become unusable."

The second-year sail operator brought up an image of the foremasts, her face wearing a look of concern.

"The yards are light but they're still sturdy, I doubt they'd break that easily, but depending on how they're tangled up, we could still snap a yard if we're not careful. It’s not just that mast we’d lose going forward, but the other two as well."

"The loss of thrust is bad enough, but it's just a plain bad omen to suffer damage right after leaving port." Kane turned to Jenny in the captain's chair. "Do we have an EVA pod on board?"

"I don't believe so."

Jenny brought up a list of the Odette II's small craft. The ship was furnished with a short-range shuttle and escape pods, but nothing equipped with the manipulators and gear for performing EVA work.

"There’s no EVA pod on board."

"What about a remotely controllable robot?"

Modern ships usually came equipped with robots capable of performing minor maintenance and emergency repairs. A hexapedal robot with arms instead of legs would allow for various sorts of work without the need to don a space suit and leave the ship, and unlike humans they could work non-stop without needing food or rest.

"Nothing like that. This ship was built before worker robots became widespread."

"Well then, it doesn't look like we have many options." Kane scanned the faces of the girls on the bridge. "The first, and simplest, is we return to the station, dock, and have someone take care of it. A repair team should be able to fix the mast without fear of damaging it."

"But if we head back now, that'll put an end to our trip!" Jenny cried. "Isn't there anything else we can do?"

"Our second option is, we try and force the masts open." Kane carefully probed the reactions of the upperclassmen. "Maybe if we're lucky, the masts will deploy without incident. If it fails, we'll be losing out on extra thrust, but we should still be able to meet our schedule without any major problems."

"But we could damage the ship," the second-year sail operator said, with many of the students nodding in agreement.

Jenny raised her hand to offer an opinion.

"Forcing the masts open is a last resort, but there has to be some other way, right?"

Kane nodded.

"The only other thing we can do is suit up and go out there ourselves. Has anyone here done a spacewalk before?"

Kane looked at the students assembled on the bridge. Everyone on board was there, save for the group in the galley preparing dinner and the pair slated for the next watch, who had been shunted off to their cabins to try and sleep.

The students looked at each other nervously.

"It doesn’t matter if it was just part of a tourist package or whatever. Have any of you been outside of a ship in a spacesuit?"

Timidly, a few students finally raised their hands. Kane decided to try a different approach.

"All right, have any of you swam in a pool or the ocean?"

They all raised their hands.

"How about diving with SCUBA gear?"

Again, almost all of them raised their hands. Jenny, whose hand was also raised, offered an explanation. "Our planet is mostly ocean, we learn to dive at school."

"Well then at least you're not total beginners. Just think of a spacewalk like diving, except you're wearing a spacesuit instead of a wetsuit, breathing through a life support system instead of a SCUBA tank, and you don't have to worry about decompression sickness. Now, who doesn’t need to be on the bridge at the moment?"

Most of those who raised their hands were freshmen. Kane noticed Marika with her hand raised excitedly, staring intently at the sail operator's control panel, and grimaced.

"I guess you'll have to do. All right, all the freshman come with me. Let's suit up and go sort out those masts."

Kane headed toward the staging room located next to the starboard midship airlock, worried about what they would do if the ship were still equipped with hundred year old spacesuits. He was relieved to see that the rows of lockers were flanked with the latest models.

"I guess I have Hyakume to thank for this."

Apparently all of the old crew's personal spacesuits had been removed from the Odette II when its classification was changed to a training vessel; they must have replaced them with rentals fit to each individual crew member whenever the ship was used for a training voyage.

In truth, Kane himself wasn't familiar with what was considered state of the art in lightweight spacesuits. He quickly reviewed the attached instructions that covered putting them on and the basics of spacewalks. Hyakume had also delivered one suit for an adult male, which was shoved in his face before he was chased out of the EVA prep room.

"I had no idea lightweight suits had become this advanced."

The only weight he could feel was the small cylinder of pressurized oxygen attached to the backpack. Rather than being used for breathing, it served the vital function of a buffer to maintain the suit's internal pressure were it to spring a leak. The thin suit consisted of multiple layers—a layer of gel, meant to seal itself in the event of even a tiny puncture, sandwiched between the pressurized layer and the radiation blocking layer.

Air was delivered to the helmet through the attached life support system. The system quickly separated exhaled carbon dioxide into carbon and oxygen, passed it through a filter, and recirculated it. The life support system also maintained the suit's internal temperature, and came with a separate electrical system to power the suit's transponder and communications, as well as relaying the wearer's vital signs back to the ship.

As a lightweight suit it lacked any sort of thruster system that would allow it to move under its own power, but even absent that it was still enough to leave Kane impressed.

"I always figured the claims that modern systems were simple enough to let you spacewalk with zero training were just marketing bull, but it's hard to argue with this."

The procedure for putting on the suit was simplified, the initial pressurization automated down to the verification, and each suit's data was linked up with the ship. Kane decided to check if the helmet's built-in radio worked by calling the bridge.

"This is Kane. Bridge, do you copy?"

"We read you," Jenny answered from the bridge. "We have a visual feed as well. We're still waiting on biometrics."

"I haven't put on my suit yet."

The ship was able to monitor the visual data from the helmet as well the wearer's body temperature and heartbeat.

"I'll be taking all six of the first-years outside. We'll be using the buddy system to make sure nothing goes wrong," Kane explained, repeating the explanation he had given them earlier before splitting them up into pairs. "Communications are always on, and all on the same frequency unless I say otherwise. I want the bridge operating on the same frequency unless circumstances require another channel."

"What kind of circumstances?"

"I'll leave that up to you—there could be an emergency situation that you don't want them to know about, or if you have something to say that might interrupt their work, for example."

"I'm not sure I fully understand, but okay. I hope nothing like that happens."

"Marie! Cut it out!"

His helmet was suddenly filled with playful, high-pitched screams. Someone had apparently switched on their radio in the middle of changing. Mildly disoriented, Kane turned down the volume on his helmet.

"Do I really have to drag all six of them along with me?"

"You know we can all hear you, sir?" Jenny called back from the bridge. "It's a shame we can't show you what the cameras are picking up."

The monitors on the bridge should also have been receiving the visuals from the helmet cameras.

"Yeah, my loss I guess. Could you connect to the changing room and tell them to stop fooling around and get suited up already? Once we're done with the sails we can get back on schedule and eat dinner."

The helmet's shared channel picked up Jenny's voice as she chastised the students in the changing room.

"Hyakume…"

While Kane's spacesuit was a mundane white affair, it seemed that Hyakume had gone so far as to prepare a multicolored assortment for the girls. Not one of the first-years was wearing a suit the same hue as another.

"I can understand pink or blue, but seriously? Designer brands with hearts and floral prints?"

"Do we have them on right?" Marika asked, her helmet in hand. The students had checked each other's suits, but they were unsure if they had missed anything.

Kane took stock of the first-years. From what he could see they didn't appear to have made any mistakes putting them on.

"Once you’ve put on your helmet and pressurized the suit, it will tell you if there's anything wrong."

He lifted his own helmet, the largest piece of hardware on the lightweight suits, so everyone could see.

"After your helmet is on, you won't be able to hear any external noise. Don't forgot to turn on your comm system. As soon as it's turned on, both your monitor camera and biometric data will start recording, leaving behind a record of everything you see and your vital signs."

There were some valid complaints about invasion of privacy and excessive surveillance.

"These suits are sealed. Once you go outside, you won't be able to fix your hair if it gets in your face or anything like that. Make sure that your hair isn't blocking the faceplate when you put on your helmet."

On cue, the longer-haired students gathered up their hair so that it wouldn't become a problem. They put on their helmets, tucked away through the opened faceplates any hair that was sticking out, and fastened them at the neck.

The helmet and suit connected at the back of the head, with a seal around neck to ensure that they were airtight. Each student checked the control panel built into her suit's left arm to confirm that it was sealed, then checked her buddy's to ensure that there were no errors.

"Staging room to bridge," Kane called out as he was putting on his own helmet. "Are you reading everyone?"

"We're receiving data from seven suits, yours included," Jenny answered. "All suits are operating normally."

"That really was simple," Kane said to himself, looking at the technicolor sea of spacesuits before him. "All right, close your faceplates. Once we've confirmed everyone's suit is sealed, we're going to open the door and head outside."

They lowered their raised visors and sealed their helmets. All communication from this point forward would have to be done by radio.

Kane checked his suit's control panel to confirm that it was sealed, then watched as each of the pairs of students did the same.

"Bridge, are all of the suits sealed?"

"All suits are maintaining a constant pressure. No problems with air or power reserves."

"Okay, I'm going to vent the staging room."

On a large, spacious vessel, it was no problem to simply vent the EVA staging room's air into space. Releasing the air from a larger compartment all at once, however, could have the same force as an explosion, blowing items around the room and disrupting the ship’s orientation.

"Everyone, grab onto something so the suction doesn't get you."

In the gravityless EVA staging room, anything not attached to some part of the room would naturally find itself floating towards the air ducts once the pumps were activated.

Kane sealed off the room, confirmed that it was no longer connected to the rest of the pressurized areas of the Odette II, and used the control panel to begin venting the room of air.

The rotating lights installed in the walls of the room flashed orange. The powerful pumps rumbled as they started sucking the air from the room. A strong wind blew through the staging room, pulling at the suited figures gripping the walls.

"If you’ve ever wanted to watch the negative effects of vacuum exposure, now would be the time."

Any bottled drinks would start to boil and eventually explode if the cap were left on, or else splatter throughout the room if not.

Eventually the roar of the pumps started to subside. Kane watched the barometer built into the control panel. The air pressure had dropped by forty percent and was continuing to fall.

With the soles of his suit still tucked firmly into the grips on the wall, he turned to survey the motley collection of spacesuits. None of them seemed to be suffering any abnormalities, but he also wasn't privy to the suits' biometric data.

"Everyone feeling okay?"

He watched through their faceplates as all of the students nodded enthusiastically. Only one student—Chiaki, who had taken up the position furthest away from him—looked wholly unfazed.

Considering their current position, the amount of radiation outside the ship would be about the same as in orbit around Umi-no-ake. The polarized glass of their faceplates would block harmful rays, darkening in color enough to obscure their faces whenever they were exposed to the sunlight.

"Let me know right away if you notice anything unusual."

The sound of the pumps was now nearly inaudible. Kane reached for the large lever situated next to the control panel.

"Opening the EVA staging door."

The entire wall adjacent to the control panel lifted upwards. The large portal—double-layered with a smaller outer layer to maintain pressure even when it wasn't fixed in place—opened wide, rotating slightly before it slid outward.

A tiny commotion swept through the staging room as the bright interior of the ship opened up into the inky black of space.

The communications system filled with wordless awe.

"And out we go. Everybody follow me."

Kane slipped his feet from the grips in the wall and slowly drifted outside.

In order to avoid one side of the ship becoming overheated by continually facing the G-type Tau Ceti star, the Odette II was performing a gentle barrel roll. Everyone's faceplates darkened as soon as they were exposed to the star's light.

"Moving in zero gravity is the same as inside the sealed dock. But there aren't any walls for you to kick off of if you're accidentally separated from the ship, so be careful."

Every year some students wound up floundering, trapped in the space between the walls of the dock and the hull of the ship. The more talented ones could swim through the air, or hurl their shoes or jackets for recoil until they could find something to grab onto, but most would shout for help before they found themselves left for dead.

The EVA staging room stared out into the void of space from the ship's starboard side. The sun visors of the suits' faceplates had darkened to block out the sun's rays, rendering the vast sea of stars invisible. Marika made her way out into space using the grips built into the bulkhead that cut through the curved hull of the ship.

When she listened carefully, she could hear the breathing of her classmates transmitted across their shared communications channel. She took in the space around her, careful not to impart any excessive forces on her body.

"So this is space…"

The pristine hull of the Odette II was even more strikingly brilliant in the light of the Tau Ceti star than it looked under the artificial lighting of the dock. It was one of the largest ships she knew of, but even her usual impression of it was dwarfed by the reality of seeing it float alone in the darkness with nothing else to compare it to.

"Has everyone left the ship?"

The support structure for the mainmast was located directly beyond the bulkhead that separated the starboard EVA staging room from the outside of the ship. The mast was as thick as a missile. Kane tucked his feet into the grips built into the mast and leaned sideways as he watched the rainbow procession of space suits exit the white sailing ship through the open bulkhead.

He would have liked to give them time to themselves to acclimate to being in space, but with the rest of the club members watching from the bridge there was no room to let them play around.

"I'm going to teach you the basics of finding your bearings in space. Start by locating the sun. I believe you can do that without my help."

The students all raised their hands and pointed at the slowly moving Tau Ceti star just past the bow of the gently rolling Odette II. The star's light was violently bright wherever it struck— there was no mistaking it even with your eyes closed.

"Good, now try to find Umi-no-ake."

"Where is it?"

"I can't find it in this light."

Only two of the students, wearing the light blue and lemon yellow suits respectively, looked towards the stern of the ship. Kane knew that Marika was wearing the light blue suit, Chiaki the lemon yellow one.

"It's just like finding your bearings in the simulators," he hinted, looking at the rest of the students. "Think about where you came from, where you're going, and what direction you're pointed, and suddenly it's not so hard. Since Umi-no-ake is illuminated by the sun, it should be easy to find."

"Ah, there it is!"

"Where, where?"

Before long all of the suited figures on the hull of the ship had turned their faceplates aft.

Beyond the stern of the ship, glowing blue and appearing smaller than even its twin moons did when viewed from the surface, was the half-illuminated Umi-no-ake.

The planet's two small natural satellites circled it well beyond the distance required for a geostationary orbit. The sight of them chasing each other across the sky was one that the students had all come to know when they were still children.

But now they watched them from outside Umi-no-ake's gravity well, looming larger than even the planet itself.

"Amazing," one enraptured student whispered, who by then should have seen the same view many times over on displays or in images. "It's beautiful seeing it so small like that."

"I'm sure it'll look even more beautiful the next time you see it. So, now that we've located Tau Ceti and Umi-no-ake, we need one more star to find our position. Without a sextant you'll just have to estimate the exact distances, but try to calculate it for yourselves."

Unsurprisingly, Marika was the first to raise her hand.

"I've figured out where we are!"

"Good, remember that and then use the control panel on your left arm to confirm our position."

"Augh!" the students groaned in unison, realizing that they had forgotten their suits possessed that function.

"Machines can break or stop working at any time. Even if one simply malfunctions, you might not realize it if the result it gives you isn't blatantly incorrect. You never know what might happen, so you need to be prepared for anything. All right, let's move out."

Kane slipped his feet from the grips on the mast and began moving forward with his hands. The first rule of working in an unpredictable extra-vehicular environment was to always leave your hands free, but there was no reason to teach that pirate's axiom to a high school yacht club.

Armed only with the basics from having worked on the ship in-dock, the six variegated spacesuits followed behind Kane's white one.

Once they were on the mast, the Tau Ceti star disappeared behind the hull of the slowly rotating Odette II. Sensing that they were in the ship's shadow, the suits’ faceplates automatically disabled their tinted sun visors.

The communications channel was filled with the students’ voices, enthralled by the unspoiled view of space that unfurled before them. In addition to faceplates that automatically blocked out dangerous radiation, their helmets were equipped with lights on either side that illuminated their field of view; as long as the lights continued to blink, their eyes would never completely adjust to the darkness of space, but opposite the light of their sun the river of stars exploded in front of them like endless fireworks frozen in time.

They continued along the slightly inclined mast towards the stern of the ship. The parade of suits eventually reached its destination, even further aft than the base of the mizzenmast.

The slender yards, which should have been sitting flush with the mast, were stuck in a state of partial deployment. They weren't meant to deploy until after the mast had been raised and extended, but the yards of the twelve o'clock mast and the starboard four o'clock mast had come into contact with each other and become interlocked.

"I always thought these things looked like they'd end up getting caught on each other," Kane said. He thought back to when he had first seen the model of the Odette II in the club room. Despite the model’s simplified and cartoonish design, the thin body and triangular arrangement of the slender masts had seemed fragile and complex, enough so that he had hesitated to handle it.

"Kane to bridge, do you see this?" he called to the bridge, knowing that his field of view should have been visible on their monitors.

"We see it," Jenny replied. "Can you tell where they’re caught up?"

"It appears that some of the yards were partially deployed, and that's where they're caught on each other," Kane said, trying to put what he was seeing into words. "What can we do about it?"

"The safety mechanisms for the mainmasts activated and halted their deployment, but I was thinking we should try and return the four o'clock mast to its original state," Jenny said, explaining the plan that she had worked out with the sail operators. "If we can sort out the snag, then maybe you can reset the yards manually?"

"Manually?" Kane shot back. "You mean fold them in by hand?"

"The whole process is automatic, there aren't any controls to retract the yards individually."

"I guess there wouldn't be," Kane said, staring up at the slender yards branching off from the thick mast. The ultra-lightweight crystalline yards already stretched twenty meters from the mast on each side, and they weren't even fully extended.

"With the size of the sails on a ship this big, is it even possible for a person to fold the yards in?"

"We're checking out an old manual right now. They shouldn't be that heavy once the locks are disengaged. Everything has to be pretty light for the solar wind to even affect them."

"Understood," Kane answered, remembering that the first rule of EVA operations was to always listen to the bridge. "The yards have some spring in them. If we try to move the mast while they're caught on each other, they may bounce back and hit you, so we're going to step away for a moment. I want everyone to move towards the bow of the ship."

Once everyone had moved away to a safe distance, congregated around the safely-deployed eight o'clock mast, the sail operator began her task. The four o'clock mast slowly started to fold back into the hull of the ship.

"Wait!" Marika cried out, watching the retraction of the four o'clock mast from atop the eight o'clock mast. "Stop the mainmast!"

"Halting mast retraction. What's wrong?"

"They’re bending where they’re caught on the twelve o'clock yards. Can you see it?"

Her field of view should have been transmitted to the bridge. She had no way of zooming in, but she tried to focus on the yards of the faraway mast.

"Ah, I see it."

The yards of the four o'clock mast were twisted at the base, thought the twelve o'clock mast still appeared fine, save for its prematurely extended yards.

"Hold the mast there, I'm going to go get a closer look."

Kane skated across the surface of the hull to the ensnared yards; they were caught on each other at a tight angle.

"Huh, so there's our problem."

The yards were designed to automatically deploy once the masts were extended. There must have been a problem when the masts were last retracted, or perhaps another issue that the automatic deployment system had been unable to detect; it appeared that, once the yards had caught on each other, they were pulled out of their housings as the masts were raised.

"Should we bring out a jack and use it to pry them apart? Or would it be better to retract the twelve o'clock mast and try to shove the yards back into place?"

"Sir, what if we rotate the yards just enough so that they aren't touching while we extend the mast? Then they should deploy cleanly, right?"

Kane hadn't realized that Marika was standing behind him until he noticed her shadow stretching across the belly of the slowly rotating Odette II.

"Marika! What are you doing there? Didn't I say to stay back? This is dangerous."

"You didn't say that, actually. But more importantly, don't you think that if we hold them down at the base, the yards should be able to slip past each other as the masts deploy?"

Kane listened to her heavily gesticulated proposal and, somewhat perturbed behind his sun visor, took another look at the tightly intertwined yards.

"If we try it and something goes wrong, we could end up with even more problems when we try to redeploy them."

"But if the mainmasts manage to deploy correctly, then won't the problem just fix itself?"

"I'm not sure that hoping for things to get better is the best course of action." At least, not if there were a better option. "Bridge, did you copy that? What do you think of Marika's plan for deploying the masts?"

"She's right about the yards opening prematurely; I think it should be fine as long as we're careful the next time they're retracted," the second-year sail operator answered. "The yards aren't yet locked into place, so as long as we aren't too reckless, I don't believe that there's any risk of them warping."

"Understood."

Kane looked down at his hands. It had never occurred to him that he might need to deploy a mast by hand.

"So, how do we go about this?"

"Are you ready?" Marika stepped forward from beside Kane. "First, retract the four o'clock mainmast. Slowly."

"Do what Marika says. If you're going to move anything, make sure you repeat the order."

Time for you to show us what you're made of, he thought.

"Lowering the four o'clock mainmast," the sail operator echoed. As the mainmast drew closer to the ship's hull, the partially extended yards bounced back, shaking, to the angle that they had held when they were tangled.

"Stop! Stop the four o'clock mainmast!"

Even as the mainmast came to a halt, the slender tips of the rigid but lightweight yards were still vibrating. With no air to offer resistance in the vacuum of space, they were slow to calm.

"Now, if we reposition the yards to make room, they should be able to deploy properly."

"Got it… Bridge, do you understand what Marika is saying?"

"Yes, we understand."

"Be careful of the tension between the yards and the mast. Even if they aren’t fixed in place, we won’t be able to work if there’s too much strain on them."

When the masts were properly extended the yards would have an interval of several meters in between each one, but with the mainmasts only partially extended that distance was shortened to only a few dozen centimeters. Kane assigned one member of each pair of spacewalkers to the yards of the twelve o'clock and four o'clock masts, while the other member stood back to keep an eye out for any danger. He himself also grabbed hold of one of the crystalline yards, as thick as his forearms. Not being fixed in position it was easy enough to move, thought that same freedom of movement was what had caused them to become entangled in the first place.

Once a student was stationed at the base of each of the rest of the yards, with the remaining three watching from the top of the twelve o'clock mast and the top and bottom of the four o'clock mast respectively, Kane called out to Marika.

225

"Marika, order them to raise the masts. Everything moves on your command."

Marika examined the yard supports from atop the four o'clock mast.

"Understood. Marika to bridge, reinitialize mast deployment."

Just to be safe, she glanced at the partially deployed eight o'clock mast. Its yards were all still properly stowed away—nothing was haphazardly jutting out or prematurely extended.

"We're going to raise all three mainmasts at once. Bridge, carefully raise the mainmasts."

Vibrations began to propagate outwards from the bases of the masts. Slowly the white mainmasts began to rise.

"So you're the culprit!"

Kane hooked his own yard in the crook of his elbow and pivoted it to stop it from contacting its counterpart. As if in response, Chiaki in her lemon yellow suit on the twelve o'clock mainmast forced her own yard with her knee, altering its angle.

The solid crystal yards shuddered as they scraped against each other, but they nonetheless spread out without getting caught.

"We’re registering the force you're applying to the yards."

"A little muscle power won't be a problem. But if there's any tension beyond that, I want you to halt the masts immediately."

As the masts continued to rise, the points at which the already extended yards intersected one another moved increasingly towards their tips. The first set of yards to separate were Chiaki's on the twelve o'clock mast. The yards of the mainmasts slowly began to return to their original angle, this time without any interference from those on the four o'clock mast.

As the four o'clock mainmast reached an angle of twenty degrees, Kane too was able to release his hold on the yards. No longer obstructed, they too began to stretch out into space.

"You should be able to raise them the rest of the way now."

Marika knelt against the rising mast, her hands gripping the handholds, and watched the hull of the ship as it retreated from her. With the mast beneath her growing larger, the Odette II's hull seemed small, insignificant.

"Starships…" Kane heard her whisper, while she sat on the expanding mast. "I never knew they were so lonely."

Kane looked down at the Odette II's white hull. From atop the slender, extending mast, the sailing ship drew ever further away.

He realized that Marika wasn't looking at the ship, but at the backdrop of space.

"Are you scared?"

"Yes."

She was staring at him, though her face was hidden behind the clouded visor.

"Scared, but excited."

He sensed the smile behind her helmet.

After waiting to ensure that the mizzenmasts also rose correctly, the seven spacesuited figures returned to the inside of the ship. With all of the masts raised, the Odette II needed only to check its antennas and electronic equipment before it could deploy its solar sails and begin its flight.

While people could still travel outside the ship with the sails raised, it was best to stay inside while the electronics were operating at full power. Kane's research had shown the ship's radar to be the equivalent of military-grade. Even in a spacesuit, the shockwave from standing directly next to it would blow a person away.

Once all seven of the suited figures returned to the EVA staging room, Kane closed the hatch, unsealed his helmet, and took his first breath of ship's air when an urgent message came from the bridge.

"Anomaly detected! Sir, something strange is going on!"

"An anomaly?"

The disconcerting announcement sent Kane to the staging room's communications panel, rather than use his suit's own voice-only communicator. The monitor showed the bridge not much different from before they had left the ship.

"It's not an emergency?"

"No, I don't believe it requires immediate attention, but our radar is showing two…no, three ships within range operating without transponders!"

Regulations required that all starships broadcast their designation, registration, current position and heading. Kane ran through a list of possible explanations in his head before answering the bridge.

"You're sure they're not asteroids or meteorites?"

"All of the small bodies in this area are listed in the catalog! And all three are too close to mistake them for asteroids or meteorites! Should we contact station control!?"

"Eh, they're probably just derelicts or drifting wrecks," Misa's relaxed voice cut-in. "Just forward the data to station control. Unregistered shipwrecks are fairly common."

"Understood. We'll send the data to station control. Sir, could you give it a look when you return to the bridge?"

"Roger. Unless they're along our plotted course, we shouldn't have to worry about them."

Once the summer vacation started, Hakuoh Girls' Academy's school physician Misa Grandwood had been fortunate enough to parlay her medical qualifications into serving on the Odette II as the ship's doctor.

Kane changed back into his shipclothes and returned to the bridge. He waved to Misa, who was still wearing her labcoat, hovering behind Jenny in the captain's chair.

"Did you finish cleaning out the sick bay?"

"Even if it did see use the last time this ship sailed, it hasn't been touched for twenty years. It was gross, nothing but bizarre medical relics and long-expired drugs!" Misa screamed.

"Well then, let's try to make sure we don't actually need to use the sick bay this trip," Kane joked, and slipped into the first officer's seat. "Now, you said you picked up some ships operating without transponders?"

"After the masts were deployed and the antennas were properly extended, we did a routine scan as part of the check of the electronics systems."

Kane glanced at the cyberwarfare operator's seat. The system was offline.

"When we did, we found three ships within range not giving off transponder signals, which the Odette II designated as hostile."

"The ship's computer doesn't lack for caution, does it?"

Kane switched on the first officer's station's display and nearly shouted.

"What's up with this radar? I thought this was a civilian ship!?"

Typically, the radars on a civilian ships were not particularly detailed. Just enough to see around them while they stuck to frequently serviced spacelanes—the costs of installing and maintaining more precise equipment skyrocketed.

Nevertheless, the first officer's display showed a picture of the area surrounding the Odette II that far surpassed what could be garnered from the radar installed on most civilian ships.

It stretched not just to the way station where they had been docked, but apparently even into Umi-no-ake's gravity well, and it was not only displaying the information from the transponders of every ship in range, but also calculating their movement vectors in real time.

"This is the kind of radar you'd find on a command warship, not some training yacht. Did someone set the power level to combat mode?"

Dubious but nonetheless curious, he cranked up the detail so far that he thought the radar might start tracking individual pieces of debris in orbit around the planet.

"At any rate, we’re a civilian ship, we don't need to suddenly start labeling ships as friend or foe. We can just turn that part off."

He altered a few settings, but kept the display range as it was.

"Impressive, isn't it?" Misa whispered in his ear from behind the first officer's chair. "It really is one of the Original Seven."

"Seriously. I don't think our radar can even pick up ships without transponders."

"You should be able to see it in the logs, but one of the three ships passed by very quickly. The other two seem to have disappeared," Jenny reported. Kane took another look at the radar display, now more legible. The Odette II's radar was still picking up the signatures of several dozen large ships and tracking their paths.

"Disappeared?"

"Could have been a bad ping, or maybe they just forgot to turn their transponder on," Misa said. It was well known that transponders had the highest failure rate of all of the major starship components. Misa peeked at Kane's display and whispered softly enough that only he could hear.

"One of them was us."

"Us!?"

He quickly realized that she was talking about the Bentenmaru.

"Hold on. How does a high school training ship manage to pick up professional pirates who are trying to stay hidden!?"

"Perhaps I should let them know they need to try harder?"

"So what about the other two?"

"More pirates, maybe military? It seems we're the hottest ship in the Cetus constellation."

"We should at least get an idea what our fellow pirates and the local military might be up to," Kane said, indignant. With a list of ships whose current whereabouts were unaccounted for, it would be simple to nail down the identities of the other two vessels.

"Heaven help us if we have to face off against real pirates in a training ship full of high school girls."

"Good luck, Captain," Misa said, waving as she left Kane alone at the first officer's station.

With all nine masts raised and the solar sails properly deployed, the Odette II began its scheduled voyage. The ship left its orbit around Umi-no-ake facing backwards, all of the sunlight reflecting off its sails back towards its direction of travel, the ship decelerating as it entered into the orbits of the inner planets of the Tau Ceti star.

The basic purpose of a solar sail is to catch sunlight and reflect it away. Solar sailers use the reflected sunlight to accelerate, decelerate, and change their own trajectory as they travel through space.

After separating from Umi-no-ake's gravity well, the Odette II had enough speed that it could have circled the Tau Ceti star like an artificial satellite. But with the aid of the sunlight, the ship was able to decelerate enough to be captured by the star's gravity and drop inside the orbits of the inner planets.

The force exerted by sunlight on a typical ship is usually small enough that it can be ignored. This meant the Odette II would accelerate and decelerate extremely slowly. In return, however, there was no limit on the amount of time the ship could spend increasing or decreasing its speed.

Their flight plan called for the ship to start with a high orbital velocity and use its sails to decelerate, bringing it into the pull of the Tau Ceti star's gravity.

This occurred on schedule, in the early hours of the second day of the voyage, when the bridge was at its least-staffed.

While the duty roster was ostensibly split evenly among all of the crew, the upperclassmen, who typically held formal positions on the bridge, were absent from the watch rotations. But unlike when the ship was in dock, they were expected to deal with any emergency promptly should one arise.

In order to keep the bridge as well-staffed as possible during the flight, the watch crew was reduced to a single pair of students only between midnight and four AM, Galactic Standard Time.

"This has to be intentional," Marika said from her place in the captain's chair. Tasked with overseeing the helm and navigation late into the night, she was checking on the progress of the scans of the ship and its immediate vicinity. "Kane has to be doing this on purpose."

"Once they decide on a team it's normal not to change it," Chiaki replied matter-of-factly from the communications console. "So how're the scans going? There've been fewer and fewer transponder signals since we left port, it should be a piece of cake."

"Yeah, I guess."

After leaving the station with the aim of entering within the orbits of the inner planets, the number of signatures in range of the Odette II had fallen off significantly.

Umi-no-ake was the Tau Ceti star’s closest habitable planet. The first planet in the system, Suna-no-aka, was bathed in solar radiation and possessed only an unmanned weather station. The second planet, Ishi-no-shiro, was home to only an automated factory that processed the metallic bedrock. The inner planets held few destinations for traveling ships.

Umi-no-ake was connected to nearby star systems through regular routes that changed with the seasons, but because faster-than-light ships were easily influenced by gravity wells, it was standard to first set a course for the fringes of a system before making a jump. It was no surprise that the Odette II was encountering fewer ships as time went on.

"At the moment, the radar is picking up fifteen ships. Two of those are solar energy plants, and one is an unmanned drone freighter, so we can ignore those. The other twelve…their IDs and flight paths all seem to be in order."

"They must be hiding," Chiaki said with certainty. "They gave themselves away when they started blocking our communications, it's surefire sign."

"And you're sure it's not just a malfunction?"

"We double-checked everything from the multibeam to the ancient UHF before we left, and there were no problems. Why else would we lose contact with the station this far out? Something's going on."

Marika thought for a moment before finally offering her opinion.

"You really think we're being jammed?"

"What else could it be?"

"Your imagination? Paranoia?"

Chiaki dismissed Marika's wishful thinking with a sigh.

"Our reception and response are even higher now that the masts are raised. It wouldn’t be so bad if they were just eavesdropping on us, but even the regular pings and weather reports from station control are cut off! Unless they were destroyed the only way that could happen is if we're being jammed!"

"I guess there's no way both the station and the surface broadcasts would go down at the same time."

Station control broadcast data that was vital for starships: updates on travel lanes, astronomical phenomena, and the like. There were multiple backup channels—even if the space station were destroyed and the ground stations wiped out in a war, the transmissions wouldn't stop.

Marika briefly wondered if her mother were keeping tabs on the Odette II from the Shin Okuhama Spaceport where she worked, before refocusing her attention on the problem at hand.

"So what would someone stand to gain by jamming a training ship full of high school girls?"

"Don't ask me, ask them," Chiaki answered sharply. "But it's not like this is just any old training ship. It's an antique, a pirate ship from the war of independence, with live electronic warfare systems, and we've got the heir to an active pirate ship on board. Not to mention that Hakuoh Academy attracts students from well-off families; someone could get a decent ransom if they took us hostage. Is it any surprise someone would try to target us?"

"Huh… So it's all just about the money," Marika, who had been listening intently, conceded. "Is that the sort of thing licensed pirates do?"

"Pirates have more important things to worry about!" Chiaki said, shutting Marika down. "You really think a pirate with a letter of marque would go after a training ship full of beginners!?"

"They wouldn’t?"

"Of course not! It's not some blanket license to break the law. A high profile kidnapping like this, you don’t think they'd have the defense force or even the imperial fleet all over them?"

"So you don't think it's a kidnapping?"

"I…can't say for sure," Chiaki said, lowering her voice. "It's possible that there could be some boneheaded interstellar criminal organizations out there with the resources to try it. But anyone smart enough to pull up the passenger manifest would probably notice something even better than some rich ingenues."

"What's even better than some rich ingenues?" Marika asked, feeling a sense of dread.

"You."

Chiaki pulled away from the communications console and stared at the captain’s chair, at Marika.

"Katou Marika, the next captain of the Bentenmaru. Or more like the future of the Bentenmaru."

"Me?" Marika said, pointing at herself. "You think they're after me?"

"They already tried to kidnap you at work, remember? And then someone tried to hack us while you were on watch in port. You don't think there could have been other times where someone stopped them from getting to you before you even realized it?"

"Now that you mention it, someone did say they were working to protect me," Marika said, recalling what Misa had said with her hands gripping the wheel of her commuter. "So the most valuable thing on the Odette II, is me…"

"It's not something you should be smiling over!"

"Huh? Was I smiling? I didn't mean to, sorry."

Marika returned her attention to the captain's display which showed the area surrounding the ship. The sun was showing increased activity, and while it was expected that solar flares would obstruct communications, the communications system wasn't showing any irregularities.

"So, if some other ship in the system does want to mess with us, what do they gain by jamming our communications?"

"Figure it out for yourself," Chiaki answered coldly. "Usually if you're serious about attacking someone, jamming their communications is only the beginning."

"If you block their communications, then they can't contact anyone," Marika surmised. "That means no distress calls, not even an SOS!"

"What then?"

"You mean there's more?"

"If that were all, then they'd only jam us as we try to send out an SOS. But they've broken into our communications and have been intercepting the data the whole time. What could they do with that?"

"You think they're trying to pass themselves off as the Odette II?"

Marika finally grasped the point Chiaki had been dancing around.

"It doesn’t matter what actually happens to us, if we keep transmitting that we're fine, nobody's going to come looking for us… So what would happen if we reported something that tried to skirt around the real problem?"

Chiaki spun the communications console's seat around to face Marika in the captain's chair. Her arms were crossed defiantly.

"What kind of message were you thinking of sending?"

"Like, that we're surrounded by an unidentified fleet, or that the crew was struck by a mysterious illness that turned them all into monsters."

"Be serious!"

"Or that we're being chased by a ghost ship…or that we're being attacked by pirates and planning to repel them."

Chiaki looked Marika in the eye.

"You seriously want to say that we're going to repel a pirate attack? A training ship full of high schoolers?"

"Well, you said this ship was worth something, right?" Marika shot back at her with a smile. "If the most valuable thing on the ship is a future pirate captain, then shouldn't I at least try to play the part?"

Chiaki stared at Marika for a moment, then turned back to the communications console.

"You know what'll happen if they're not willing to let things go at just hacking our comms, right?"

"We could end up in a real fight," Marika said nervously. "Well, I hope we can get away before it comes to that. But if not, we'll just have to think of something when the time comes."

"You’d better start thinking now." Chiaki began to filter their communications data. "These aren't the kind of people who shy away from using force when things don't go their way."

"I guess that could be bad," Marika said with a laugh. "A battle during my first training cruise. That's a lot of pressure. But for now, we need figure out who's jamming us and where they are."

Communication in space can be divided into two major types: the old method of radio waves propagated at lightspeed, and, when necessary, lagless faster-than-light communications transmitted through hyperspace.

EM wave broadcasts are used for short-range communication where time lag isn't an issue; FTL communications are used when transmitting over long distances.

The jamming of the Odette II first manifested in the form of poor reception over its usual communications channels. The broadcasts from station control and the FTL links to the in-system beacons—mainly reports on astronomical weather or positioning and traffic details—could be repeated multiple times in the event of a communications failure, until the transmission was successful.

It started when Chiaki first noticed that the system had been automatically sending and receiving the same transmissions over and over, despite the absence of any circumstances that could have interfered with their communications.

When she ran a check to determine whether the Odette II was being jammed, several irregularities started to appear in the FTL communications records.

"If it were just the FTL, they could be hiding on the other side of the galaxy, but if our standard comms are being intercepted too, they’ve got to be close by," Chiaki said. She set the computer to scan through the collected data; the noise left in the communications logs should have been enough to find out who they were and what they were up to.

"But there are fewer and fewer ships close by."

Marika had checked the ships that were showing up on the Odette II's high definition radar one by one, either by comparing them to the most recent database that they had acquired while still in port or by querying the station, confirming their designations and flight plans. It should have been immediately obvious if one had been using a fake name, though it was possible that one of the real ships could have deviated from its scheduled course.

But at least for the time being, her efforts hadn't proved fruitful.

Tau Ceti had never been a highly trafficked system. It wasn't at a confluence of shipping lanes, had no major military armories or training grounds, or even any significant trading ports—there were only so many ships that passed through the system.

And even fewer that would enter into the orbits of its inner planets.

Ships wanting to make a hyperspace jump headed straight for the edges of the system, to avoid the influence of gravity wells. There were hardly any ports among the inner planets.

This meant fewer ships in the space surrounding the Odette II during its jaunt around the Tau Ceti star.

"Cyberwarfare is easier when you're close by, right?"

"It's easier to go on the offensive when there's no time lag," Chiaki answered. "With an open FTL link, you have to worry about attacking and defending at the same time. But with standard comms your offensive output increases the closer you get, and the target only has microseconds to react."

"Modern ships leave their FTL links open, don’t they?"

Chiaki pondered, her fingers hovering above the communications panel.

"I guess nowadays they do, yeah."

The Odette II's FTL link was only open while it was in use; regulations had always been clear about that. But it was normal for ships that traveled through hyperspace to leave their FTL links open all the time.

"In that case, wouldn't it be better for us to attack them over the FTL link?"

"Theoretically, sure." Chiaki's eyes darted towards the cyberwarfare console, its lights extinguished. "But then we'd have to leave the cyberwarfare system running constantly if we wanted to be able to respond when we needed to."

"Um, I might be wrong, but I don't think they're going to try and attack us again."

Chiaki glanced at Marika in the captain's chair.

"Why not?"

"The Odette II is on course to circle the sun and return. Our flight plan isn't a secret, anyone could access the station and see it. If someone's going to try and mess with us, I think it’ll be when we're on the other side of the sun, close to Suna-no-aka."

"Go on. What makes you think so?"

"If we are being targeted—it doesn't matter whether they're after me or the ship or whatever—then wouldn't they want to do it somewhere where it's hard for anyone else to get involved? When we're closest to Suna-no-aka, on the far side of the sun, that's when we're furthest away from the station, where most of the ships are. And even if anyone did want to try and stop them, they'd still need to rush to reach us. If I wanted to do something to someone, I'd ambush them at Suna-no-aka."

Chiaki paused briefly before answering.

"That makes sense. Not bad."

"Thanks." Marika smiled. "You think I'd make a good pirate?"

The pause was longer this time.

"Maybe, if you keep at it. But you're forgetting something important."

"What's that?"

"You can't fight a battle by yourself, cyberwarfare or otherwise. This isn’t like when they tried to hack us in port. The enemy knows who we are, and they're smart enough that they tried to intercept our communications before attacking. If you want to win, you're going to need to explain to the rest of the crew why we're being targeted, and why it is you think we need to fight.”

This time it was Marika's turn to hesitate.

"Actually, I already told the president."

"You did what!?" Chiaki shouted. Marika's eyes jumped reflexively toward the open door to the bridge. Chiaki stood up from the communications console and glared full-force at Marika, who shrank back into the captain's chair.

"I'm sorry! I figured it'd slip out sooner or later, so it was better to just tell her myself."

"Who else did you tell!?"

"Um… I also let everyone at Lamp House know, the day after everything happened."

"Augh!" Chiaki groaned, exasperated. "I assumed you might tell the yacht club, but your classmates too? And random civilians?"

"Oh, don't worry. Everyone who was working that shift was from school."

"That's not the point! Don’t you have any idea what it means to be a space pirate!?"

Considering the speed at which information travels through teenage girls, it wouldn't be surprising if everyone on Umi-no-ake knew who the next captain of the Bentenmaru was by now. Chiaki shook her head, her long straight hair aflutter.

"And after all the work I've put into this!"

"Yeah, I imagine this hasn’t been easy for you."

Chiaki scowled at Marika. Marika quickly tried to explain herself.

"I mean, the military, the police, the mafia, they all found out. It was only a matter of time, right? So I thought, better they hear it from me before wild rumors start going around."

"What did they say?"

"Who?"

"Your coworkers, how did they react?"

"They were all like, that must be rough, looking at me like they felt sorry for me or something."

Chiaki let out a deep sigh.

"What about Jenny?"

"She was all like, that must be rough. Her father's the head of a huge shipping company, so she has a lot to deal with too."

Chiaki thought for a moment before saying anything.

"Wait, her family owns Hugh and Dolittle Interstellar Transport!?"

"What, you didn't know?" Marika looked at Chiaki, surprised. "She has bodyguards with her whenever she's outside the school."

Chiaki clutched at her head.

"I’d forgotten about that."

"It looked like she could tell something was going on too, but she thought it might have been about her."

"She comes from a big shipping family, what's she doing on a high school training ship? She could take one of their ships anywhere she wants!"

"It's not like she can just take a company ship whenever she feels like it."

Chiaki suddenly found herself at a loss for words.

"They've been talking about marrying her off ever since she was a kid. She wants to keep going to school, but… She laughs about it, but people like her have it hard too."

"She doesn't act like it…"

"And the vice president, when she was in middle school she got caught hacking and ended up on probation. She wondered if that might have had something to do with it too, but I doubt it."

"You told the vice president too!?" Chiaki shrieked. "Who else did you tell?"

"Uh…"

Marika quickly rattled off a list of names, more than half of the people on board. Apparently she had told all of the first-years, and nearly half of the second- and third-years.

"Exactly how long have they known?"

"Ever since we came to the station, before we launched…"

"Since before we launched…"

Chiaki was stunned. Marika laughed.

"We talked about all sorts of things. A lot of the third-years have to start studying for exams once we get back, and some of the second-years are getting part-time jobs, so they might not be able to make it to club meetings anymore. This isn’t just about me."

Marika glanced up at the main monitor, which was displaying the Odette II's course with the Tau Ceti star at the center.

"They've all got things to go back to. That's why we need to make sure this ship makes it back safe."

"You're not the captain, you don't need to worry about the rest of the crew."

Chiaki traced the path of the Odette II and frowned.

"But this might as well be my first job as a pirate. I figure if I can not only win, but really handle things right, then maybe I really am cut out to be a pirate."

"You're too soft." Chiaki turned around in a huff and reclaimed her seat at the communications console. "If I were your enemy, and I weren't already out to get you, I'd say you're handing yourself right over to them."

"If you really were my enemy, I don't think you’d stare me in the face and tell me that you were."

"That could depend on a lot of things."

"Don't worry. I haven't told Kane and Misa that everybody knows yet."

"Why not?" Chiaki asked, without bothering to look back at the captain's seat.

"Because they'd definitely try and stop me," Marika answered. "Kane may be our advisor but he's only just managed to remember everyone's names and faces. Just because he has a file that lists their addresses and their parents’ jobs doesn't mean he knows what they're really like. Misa…maybe she’d think it was interesting enough to get on board."

"You don't think they'd help?"

"Maybe if push comes to shove." Marika's fingers tapped away at the captain's control panel. "But they'll only get involved if things turn bad. How unfair is that?"

"This isn’t really the time to complain about fairness." Chiaki reinitialized the filtering on the transmissions picked up by the Odette II's antennas. "If we can win, great, but how we handle things is more important than winning and losing. Our first priority is getting home safely."

"Getting home safely…" Marika said, her hands coming to a stop. "All I can do is try my best."

"I can tell you one thing," Chiaki said, her hands still working the controls. "A pirate always aims for the best outcome, regardless of what she has to do to get it."

Marika smiled.

"I'll remember that. I guess that means I’ll need to march back into port with something to show for myself."

Marika set about identifying all of the ships within range, pinging them individually and picking out anything suspicious in the resulting data.

She kept at it for some time, juggling the data on one hand and all the available manuals and help files on the other.

"This is hopeless!" she screamed.

Chiaki paid her no mind.

"I have no idea how I'm supposed to figure out who's trying to break into our communications!"

"This equipment may be advanced but it's still a relic. There are some things it just can't do." Chiaki's hands stopped. "Well? There's still one piece of equipment that you can use."

Marika looked at the darkened cyberwarfare console, and back again at the captain's console.

There were no other ships that were projected to approach the Odette II for the next twenty four hours as it headed towards the Tau Ceti sun. And if any ships were to approach them unexpectedly, the radar would be able to pick them up immediately.

The last time they had activated the cyberwarfare equipment, while docked on the station, it had quickly tripped the breaker. Even while running on sails, their main engine remained powered up—turning on the system wouldn't plunge the ship into a blackout.

At worst, the engine would increase its output in order to supply enough power.

"Let's do it."

Marika leapt from the captain's chair and across the bridge, sliding into one of the cyberwarfare operator’s seats. "If the Odette II is under attack, then we're justified in defending ourselves."

"I'm not entirely sure you're right about that, but even so, we're the ones on watch. I think we need to know whether we're really being attacked or not."

"They're blocking our communications, that's clearly an attack. We need to show them it's not okay to mess with us."

Marika looked down at the silent three-seat cyberwarfare console and took a deep breath before kicking the power lever at her feet. One by one she depressed the switches on the main panel.

"Right, I know you want to update to the latest patterns, but you're going to have to wait. It wouldn't be good if you tried that right now."

The cyberwarfare system would begin an auto-diagnostic as soon as it was booted up, and request access to the public datanet in order to check its current database against the latest version. Marika used a high-level command to cancel the database update, preventing the Odette II from opening a high-bandwidth data connection.

The console's control panel was fully illuminated, its diagnostic had found no errors, and cyberwarfare and defensive capabilities were active on standard and FTL communications, radar, and sensor systems.

"Just turning it on spiked the main engine's power usage by five hundred percent," Chiaki said, glancing at the engineering console. "We may not use much power when we're running on sails, but that's still way too inefficient."

"It may be a fuel hog, but I won't complain as long as it gets the job done."

Marika scanned the Odette II's cyberwarfare console, found the setting to respond automatically to any attacks, and switched it to manual. If left the way it was, it could suddenly initiate an attack on its own, as it had the first time they booted up the system.

The cyberwarfare system's habit of responding as if there were an active threat each time it was booted up would cause problems for any nearby ships, and so its settings had been changed while the Odette II was still in dock. With the help of the manuals that remained on the ship and the notes left behind by former club members, they had set the system to passive defense only, rather than go on an all-out offensive whenever it was activated.

No one, not even Kane, had been able to learn the full extent of the Odette II's cyberwarfare system's design or operation before they had set sail. Although it was similarly recommended that modern systems, with their arcane operating procedures, be set to automatic, the hundred-year-old military-grade system was like an artifact out of time.

While preparations were under way for their voyage, some of the crew had volunteered to analyze the system, and they had succeeded in sussing out the bare minimum of its operation. What wasn’t clear was how a machine from more than a century ago was still able to operate in the world of modern cyberwarfare, although the fundamentals of radar, sensors, standard and FTL communications—the eyes, ears, and mouth of a ship—hadn't changed.

"Uh, let's see. First, I, uh…"

Marika routed the raw data captured by the Odette II's radar and antennas to the cyberwarfare console.

"Re-run the IFF scan, then take each ship and…hey, do you think it's okay to let the Odette II do a scan while this is running?"

"I think it should be fine, as long as you don't suddenly activate the high-output radar like we're running a fire control system or anything." Chiaki passed by the engineering console on the way to the cyberwarfare operator's seat. "If you just reanalyze the data we've already collected, they won't be able to see what we're up to. It's all internal."

"All right, selecting a target and re-scanning."

Marika chose one of the blinking dots on the display that showed the ships that were being picked up by the Odette II's radar. The system would compare the information transmitted by the ship’s transponder to data on other identified ships and search for any inconsistencies.

Currently the Odette II was inside the orbit of Tau Ceti's second planet, Ishi-no-shiro. The number of nearby ships had dwindled as they approached the brilliant, burning G-type star.

The check of the ships' transponders data was finished quickly.

"No irregularities, nothing suspicious."

Marika read the half-expected results and sighed.

"Ah well, I didn't really think they'd be foolish enough to show themselves yet."

"So what now?" Chiaki asked, staring at the cyberwarfare system as it idled quietly, waiting for its next command. "Do we just wait for them to step up their attack in a way that makes them easier to spot?"

"That would be the easy thing to do, but it feels too much like giving up."

Marika watched their surroundings projected on the large, flat display in front of her and pondered.

"There aren't any other ships close enough that they could react that quickly to our standard comms. But if that's the case, then it shouldn't be this easy for them to jam us using any of the normal methods. But the evidence of jamming is there. So that must mean…"

Marika mumbled to herself as she rose from the console. She somersaulted across the bridge, grabbing onto the backrest of the radar operator's seat.

"I wonder if there could be a stealthed ship nearby, with its transponder off?”

The radar station's holographic display showed only the ships in the vicinity of the Odette II whose transponders were transmitting. Marika slowly poked away at the panel, digging through her memories of how to operate it. She changed the display mode to show all physical objects captured by the radar, regardless of whether or not they had a transponder.

Suddenly the display was a jumbled cloud of blinking dots with the Odette II at the center. Even now the radar was aware of debris as small as a few dozen centimeters. With a radius of several tens of kilometers, it was quickly overloaded with radar signatures, the display flashing an error message.

"Sorry, sorry. We can ignore natural objects like meteors and asteroids."

Even after changing the settings to ignore all cataloged asteroids, comets, and other stardust, the results remained the same. Debris too small to cause significant damage to a ship traveling at intra-system speeds simply wasn't recorded.

"We'll never be able to make anything out like this."

The back end of the Odette II's course intersected with what appeared to be a dust tube left in the wake of a recently passed comet. The ship's radar was picking up objects in all directions, though it was unable to discern their shapes or compositions.

Marika confirmed the transponder signals on the radar display. The closest was located in one of the spacelanes beyond the second planet, Shiro-no-ishi, a solid several million kilometers away.

"It should be fine at this distance."

"What should be fine?"

"Even if we do a scan with the fire-control radar, we should be too far away for them to think we're trying to target them."

"The cyberwarfare system isn’t enough? You want to use the high-output radar too?" Chiaki shouted. "You realize you're putting us on full combat alert, right!?"

"Well, we still have the fire control, even if the ship's not packing beam cannons or missiles anymore. And we can't see what we need to with our current radar."

"I know that, but…!" Chiaki howled as she made her way to the radar operator's station. "What do you think will happen if we suddenly light someone up with that radar? What if there were a warship lurking nearby? Nobody would blame them for thinking we're hostile and blowing us out of the sky without any warning!"

"Cloaking devices and flying with active stealth are against regulations. If they've been doing that this whole time, then I'd think they're the ones who are being hostile."

Marika began the preparations for switching radar modes.

"Don't worry, we'll only do a single scan with the high-output radar. Even if it doesn't find a stealthed ship, it'll at least signal to them that we aren't going to give up without a fight."

"Make it a short-range, precision scan." Chiaki returned to the cyberwarfare console and sat back down. "At least that way you'll have an excuse."

"Roger. Short range, high definition, single sweep," Marika said, confirming the radar's settings. "Here we go!"

Were anyone in the system watching the Odette II at that moment, they would likely have seen the ship flash as it sent out a powerful radar pulse in all directions from its elevated masts.

The high frequency fire control radar was able to measure an object's location and distance with far greater accuracy than the standard navigational radar could. The radar waves propagated from the nine masts and the forward bowsprit would respond to matter only a few millimeters wide.

The high-frequency radar waves spread out in all directions, the time lag in their return corresponding to the distance to the object off of which they reflected. These responses were fed through not only the radar's computer, but the cyberwarfare system as well, where they were analyzed and assessed.

The results were immediate.

"Found them!"

Marika stared at the glowing red dot on the display representing a unique response to the high-frequency radar.

"Five hundred thousand kilometers astern.. A battleship!?"

The computer seemed to stutter a moment before making the identification.

"A Pleiades-class battleship, the Alcyone? Who does it belong to!?"

"The battleship Alcyone, of the Colonial Navy."

They had reverted to the standard radar, which showed no sign of the battleship half a million kilometers behind them. The results of the computer's identification flashed red to indicate an enemy.

"No way. It can't be."

Chiaki coolly read aloud the computer's findings.

"The system defense force has no battleship called the Alcyone. A battleship by that name was destroyed a hundred twenty years ago in the war for independence."

"Is it a derelict? Or a spoofed transponder signal?"

Marika was about to re-scan the ship's position with the high-frequency radar, but stopped herself. If it really were a battleship, directing the fire control radar at them would be the same as firing an opening salvo.

"There is no transponder, it's just an analysis of the radar signature!"

Marika took another look at the standard radar’s readout. There was no sign of the battleship, which was significantly larger than the Odette II.

"If they really sent a battleship after us, they never would have stayed hidden for this long!"

The Odette II had been traveling with its transponder and radar active. A battleship that close should have been obvious. Convinced she was correct, Marika directed the high-frequency radar in the direction of the battleship a second time.

There was no response.

"Huh?"

There was nothing in that region of space that the radar was able to find. The waves dispersed fruitlessly out into the void.

"Are they stealthed? Or did they run away?"

"Nothing on the infrared, and no energy signatures either," Chiaki reported, reciting the sensor readings off the console. "Pleiades-class battleships don't have stealth capabilities. And even if they did, there's no way they could change their position without leaving behind a drive signature."

"Well something must have happened to them…"

Marika expanded the reach of the radar to a thirty degree zone aft of the Odette II and scanned again. No response.

"They just disappeared?"

"Or maybe they were never there to begin with."

"They have to have been there, it's in the logs. This equipment may be old, but I don't think it's gone so gray that it's hallucinating things that aren't there."

"But the battleship Alcyone doesn’t exist."

Chiaki had looked up more information.

"The Alcyone was sunk a hundred twenty years ago, during the war of independence. All that exists are records from the attacking fleet. The hull was lost, and the wreck was never recovered."

"Why would the computer spit out the name of such an old battleship?"

Marika shuddered as a chill ran down her spine. Chiaki had a simple explanation.

"It's a ghost ship."

"A ghost ship?" Kane repeated while he received their report the next morning before breakfast. His expression was mixed.

"You keep running across the strangest ships. Did they ask you for a ladle?"

"A ladle? What are you talking about?" Marika asked, confused. She had returned to her quarters when her shift ended at four, but didn't sleep, and sprung herself on the captain's quarters just before everyone was meant to wake.

"Forget I mentioned it. How do you know it was a ghost ship?"

"Well, we were worried our communications were being jammed and thought that there might be a relay nearby, so we switched on the high-frequency radar."

Kane's first thought was that they needed to make sure that all the electronic equipment was functioning properly.

"Hell, that radar's dangerous. You know it's used for guiding missiles."

"We made sure there were no ships nearby that might think we were targeting them."

"True, there aren't many ships lurking around out here. So, how exactly did you manage to find a ghost ship?"

"We started with a full scan, and it had picked up a battleship. But it was one that was supposed to have sunk a hundred twenty years ago in the war for independence, and after that we couldn't find it again…"

"Is that it? The first hit may have been a mistake, or a random echo, or maybe you just imagined it."

"That's what we thought too, but we looked up the colonial battleship Alcyone and it keeps showing up in records for years after it was sunk."

"Huh, I see."

It wasn't uncommon for missing ships to be reported as being sighted after they'd supposedly been sunk. Collections of sightings were collected at space stations and shipping offices, and could be turned up with a simple archaeological search.

"In any case, it does look like you stumbled onto something serious."

Space was vast, and ships had been traveling through it for centuries. There were countless records of such chance encounters.

Discrepancies between what was observed and what was recorded were inevitable. It had become customary to ascribe anything which couldn't be confirmed to ghost ships.

There were no clear numbers to show how many of those encounters were simple mistakes or errors, and how many were actual phantom ships. An encounter with a ghost ship wasn't rare in the reaches of space.

"Well, try not to look so concerned. 'Ghost ship' is just another word for an unidentified flying object. Every experienced sailor comes across one sooner or later."

"Have you ever seen one?" Marika asked earnestly.

Kane looked away.

"Sure. In fact, you might say I've fought one."

"You were in a fight with a ghost ship?"

"I mean, I still can't say for sure that it was a ghost ship, but one time I nearly ended up in a firefight with an old battleship that was using a century-old transponder…maybe this isn't the time for this story."

"When!? Where!? What happened to them?"

"This was a while ago, closer to the core, along a route that was nothing but dark nebulas and dwarf stars. We were playing the role of opfor in a security force exercise, and everything was going according to the script, when we caught a random jump signature and the IFF of a ship that wasn't supposed to be there."

Kane waved his arms in front of him, and his expression made it seem like the story was one he didn't want to remember.

"We thought they might be part of the security force or some third party trying to interfere, and immediately threw up our ECM, but ultimately they fled before we could line up a shot. Later, I heard these old stories about strange phenomena in that region of space, jump signatures that would show up years later, like a terminal echo. When I saw some old battle logs that matched the inconsistencies in our records, it made me shiver."

"So it was a ghost ship?" Marika pressed. Kane shook his head enigmatically.

"No idea. We couldn't confirm anything, and all we’ve got are sensor logs and our own memories. We exchanged data with the security force once the exercise was over, and they had recorded some strange, unexpected noise too. Anyway, you shouldn’t let it get to you."

He slapped Marika on the back reassuringly and yawned.

"Sometimes people will pretend to be a ghost ship when they're up to no good. Nobody's actually been sunk by a ghost ship in the past hundred years, at least."

For just a moment Marika seemed relieved.

"But couldn't the ghost ships just not be leaving behind any evidence?"

"Maybe, but I doubt you'll find any records of ghost ship sightings around the sun, let alone incidents involving them. You didn't come across any when you were investigating, did you?"

"I didn't."

"Worrying will get you nowhere in space. First eat some breakfast, look after the ship, and then if you’ve got any time left you can spend it thinking about ways to hack a ghost ship."

The mess should have already started serving breakfast—Kane sent Marika on her way and used the control panel in the captain's quarters to access the communications system. Although he couldn't control the Odette II from there, he was able to contact every other part of the ship, as well as track its current status.

He opened a private circuit meant to bypass the bridge, made sure it was encrypted for privacy, held the headset/microphone up to his ear, and entered the code to raise the Bentenmaru.

"This is Kane, on the Odette II. Bentenmaru, do you copy?"

"This is the Bentenmaru, we copy. It's Hyakume. What's going on?"

Kane recounted to Hyakume in brief the report he had just received from Marika, and called up a copy of the bridge logs. There were records of the cyberwarfare system and the high-frequency radar being activated, as well as what they had found.

"She ran into a ghost ship on her first flight out? What a promising girl. Can't say I've heard of many colonial battleships showing up as ghost ships, though."

"I'll take a look myself, but I'm gonna be too busy babysitting the yacht club to spend much time on it."

Kane forwarded a copy of the Odette II's logs over the channel to the Bentenmaru.

"I want you to check if this is a well-known ghost ship or not. Also, look for anyone in the biz who still uses the old trick of passing themselves off as a ghost ship. The Bentenmaru gets around; see if anybody’s shown a particular interest in us of late."

Marika left the captain's quarters, but instead of heading for the mess she returned straight to the bridge.

The early morning crew had already started to assemble. Marika glanced at the communications console's display while trading 'good mornings'.

"Anything?"

"He's opened up an external transmission."

Chiaki stared at the display, headset to her ear; it showed an open FTL link from the captain's quarters, the number it was being routed to, and the data being transmitted.

"Do you know who he's calling?"

"Fortunately the number's listed in the phone book." Chiaki pointed at the section of the display showing the receiver's information. "The pirate ship Bentenmaru. What kind of pirate keeps a publicly listed number?"

"One of the advantages of being licensed, I guess. Can you listen in on the call?"

"I'm listening," Chiaki confirmed, the headset still planted against her ear. "The channel is private and encrypted but I'm still picking it up. I guess one of the upgrades we made before leaving port? Or maybe one of the upperclassman wanted to spy on our teacher?"

"‘How’ doesn’t matter, what's he saying?"

"He's telling them about the ghost ship, and asking for a followup investigation."

Marika reached over and started manipulating the communications panel. The display showed the recipient’s current position. Beyond the orbit of the second planet, Shiro-no-ishi, closer to the station—a good distance away from the Odette II.

"I thought it might have been the Bentenmaru messing with us, but I guess not."

"What made you think they'd do that?"

"We've got a potential future captain and two of their crew on board. Maybe they'd try to throw me a curveball while I was on watch, try to see how I'd react."

Chiaki shot Marika a look before returning her eyes to the display.

"Transmission terminated. I don't think pirate ships have enough free time for that sort of thing."

"Get what you needed?" Jenny asked. She had been listening to Marika and Chiaki's hushed conversation from the captain's chair. She clapped her hands together. "Okay then, erase your tracks so you don't get caught eavesdropping and then go get some breakfast."

Marika and Chiaki exchanged glances.

Marika nodded first. She stepped back from the communications console and faced the captain's chair.

"Could I have a moment of your time?"

"What for?" Jenny said, looking around at the still half-empty bridge. "Or is it something you'd rather not mention here?"

"It’s something the whole crew should hear."

"So someone is after us, and they're pretending to be a ghost ship?" Jenny said, summarizing Marika's story.

"That's my best guess, at least for now," Marika said. "The intermittent jamming since we left port, as well as the hacking attempt on the station, they’re all probably coming from the same people."

"A high school training cruise even gets its own villains. We're really getting the deluxe package."

This elicited the first laughs from the bridge crew since they'd heard the entire story.

"I don't suppose you know who's doing this?" Jenny continued.

"Not yet. But in addition to targeting the Odette II, they've also probably been contacting the station pretending to be us."

"And it's not just the jamming. There are some suspicious gaps in the navigational data from the station, and signs that our radar's being blocked as well. Whoever's targeting us, it appears they’ve got some influence."

"I wish I were just being paranoid, but it looks like it's not that simple."

"So, I wonder what it is they’re after."

Marika thought for a moment before answering.

"At this point, I think they're testing our communications and cyberwarfare capabilities. Once they've collected enough data, they'll probably swoop in and hit us with everything at once."

"Oh my, how scary," Jenny shrieked with feigned terror. "We'll need to make sure we're ready for them when they attack."

"If they do attack, I think it will probably be when we reach the other side of the sun, when we come closest to Suna-no-aka."

"What makes you think so?"

"If I were them, I'd want to hit us when we’re furthest away from the station, where it's hardest for us to contact anyone."

Marika leaned over the captain's chair and tapped carefully at the control panel, bringing up a holographic map of the Odette II's planned course through the Tau Ceti system.

"The Odette II's orbit will take us around the Tau Ceti star and back to the station. The furthest point from Umi-no-ake is in the vicinity of Suna-no-aka, on the other side of the sun. If I were going to launch an attack on a training ship with an inexperienced crew, I'd hide in Suna-no-aka's shadow and hit them from behind."

"That far away from the planet, even if we sent off an SOS after being attacked, it'd be over by the time help arrived. Should we notify the defense force?"

"We're not going to do that," Marika said, scanning the faces of the bridge crew. "Don't you think it'd be cooler to repel them ourselves?"

An awed murmur rose from the bridge crew, seated at or floating next to their stations.

"Can we fight them off?"

Marika beamed as she looked at the crew, and smiled.

"With the Odette II, and with this crew, definitely."

Jenny's gaze was fixed intently on Marika's face.

"Teacher incoming!" Chiaki exclaimed, watching as the ship's internal monitors showed the door to the captain's quarters opening. As the crew returned to their duties, Jenny quietly asked a question.

"Why do we need to keep this a secret from Kane?"

"Because if he knew," Marika said with a smirk, "He'd never let us get away with it."

Jenny laughed and nodded.

"Understood. Head to the mess for breakfast and then get yourself some sleep. You both look like you could use some shut-eye."

"Marika, reporting!"

Marika had returned to the bridge for her afternoon shift as the radar and sensor operator.

"Ah, you're back," Kane said, waving. He was discussing something with Jenny, who was seated in the captain's chair.

"Did anything happen while I was gone?"

"Nothing out of the ordinary. We're approaching the far side of the Tau Ceti star; no ghost ships, no contact with any strange aliens."

Kane fished the chronometer from his breast pocket and checked the time.

"I'm going to get something to eat. Call me if there's an emergency."

"Yes sir, see you when you get back."

Marika waited for him to leave, then floated towards the captain's chair where he had just been standing.

"Sleep well?" Jenny asked accusingly. Marika's face did not appear well-rested.

"I was working on the you-know-what. Did you take a look yet? I haven't worked everything out yet."

"I saw it."

Jenny used the display in front of her to call up the message Marika had sent her and opened the attachment. Marika moved around to the back of the captain's chair where she could see more easily.

"So this part here…"

"It's a prediction of how the enemy might attack, and how to respond," Marika said, reiterating the contents of her message.

"I gathered that. But how can you predict how they'll attack when you don't even know where they are?"

"We may not know where they are, but it’s likely they’re somewhere within the system, and probably somewhere inside the planetary orbits. Modern starships don't vary much in terms of their drives—as long as they're not magic, I can't imagine their plan of attack being anything but a variation on typical pirate or military tactics. They've been trying everything they possibly could since we were still docked at the station. Extrapolate out from that and the suspected point where they'll strike, and these are their only options."

"Sort of like using established plays in a game of Go?" Jenny said as she scrolled through Marika's proposal. The game she referenced was an old one, unfamiliar to Marika.

The plan expanded into a flowchart, listing various hypothetical scenarios and the responses to take to each.

"There's a lot there, but once you grasp the basic idea, it's not that hard to understand," Marika added, almost apologetically. "In short, we make the enemy think that their attacks are working perfectly. They'll probably throw whatever they can at us as they approach, so we’ll pretend that we've fallen into their trap."

"That's the strategic part," Jenny said, eyes darting between Marika and the flowchart. "But even if we're just pretending to fall for it, they might actually be able to take over our systems. Are you willing to risk that?"

"So far, their attempts to hack the Odette II have stuck to the most common, most basic patterns. Even if they get creative about it, they aren't that technically advanced. I doubt we'd be able to pull this off if they had more than three layers of security, or if we were dealing with multiple attackers, but with just a single opponent I think this will be enough."

Marika's plan didn't involve using the cyberwarfare system to launch an active offensive; it merely required monitoring the Odette II's systems. The standard and FTL communications would operate as normal, and they would use only textbook responses to hacking attempts and corrupted data.

"The Odette II's main computer has plenty of memory available, so I think we can make a perfect isolated copy to use as a decoy. Once they've compromised it and start poking around, we should be able to find out what it is they're after without it impacting the ship."

With the cyberwarfare system set to monitor the entirety of the ship's systems, they could not only prevent any intrusions, but also analyze the attack patterns and fabricate results to make the attacker think that they had been successful.

"And that's the tactical part."

"Is it? I don't really know the difference between strategy and tactics."

"You don't have to know the difference, just know that they're separate things. So what makes you think this is the way to go?"

"The only data we have on them is that they want us to think they're a ghost ship. At the very least, we know that they have the technology to do that, but we still don't know anything else about them. I don't think we have any other option but to play along until they reveal themselves."

Marika scrolled to the end of the flowchart. Jenny looked up at her.

"And what do we do once we can see them? For all that it used to be a pirate ship, the Odette II isn't equipped with anything that we could use in a fight."

"What about that magnificent cyberwarfare system?" Marika said, pointing across the bridge. "If they sink us, it might count as a win, but they get nothing from it. But we don't need to sink them either. As soon as they show themselves, we hit them with everything we have. If we can take over their systems, that's a victory."

"It’s one thing to talk about it, but will it actually be that easy to pull off?"

"I don't think it will be easy. But we have the equipment, and we have the people. I believe we have a chance."

Jenny looked around the bridge, filled with members of the yacht club.

"What does the vice president have to say about it?"

The club's vice president, Lynn Lambretta, had been arrested for hacking when she was in middle school. She was the yacht club's number one expert on cyberwarfare.

"I sent it to her at the same time I sent it to you. I’m sure she’s seen it by now."

"Lynn!" Jenny shouted from the captain's chair. "If you're not busy, could we have a moment of your time?"

"Who's ever not busy on a sailing ship?" Lynn replied as she floated towards the captain's chair from the cyberwarfare console. "We're still trying to figure out everything we can about the ship's systems."

"Did you see Marika's plan?"

"I did," she said softly. She was trim and tall, her hair cut short. "We're caught in a hacking game with a ghost ship, or something like that, right?"

"What do you think of it?"

"Direct confrontation is outside my realm of expertise even on the net, let alone between two ships hurtling through space."

Lynn's eyes jumped to a bored underclassman fooling around at the cyberwarfare console.

"This ship's cyberwarfare equipment is ancient, its interface is nothing like what they use today. I've been looking into it since before we left the planet, but I'm still a long way from understanding it."

"Strange, I never thought I'd hear you badmouthing a computer."

"I never figured I'd be cracking networks, even on a ship. But even then, the fundamentals of cyberwarfare aren't that different: networks, radio waves, circuitry—physically it's all been the same for a long time. The latest advancements just add more features to boost the price, older gear shouldn't have much of a problem responding to an attack."

"Do you really think we'll be able to fight back? I sort of have my doubts, to be honest."

"I think we should be able to manage. I mean, the Odette II's made it this far, right?"

Lynn looked up at their plotted course, rendered in three dimensions on the large display. They'd had all sorts of minor setbacks, but were still on schedule and making time according to plan.

"I feel like the flowchart might be leaving a lot out, but there's nothing wrong with the basic idea. A little tweaking and the cyberwarfare system should be able to handle things on its own."

"You think it'll work?"

Lynn looked back at Jenny and Marika.

"With proper analysis, the right equipment, and time, you can accomplish anything. What do you think?"

"This ship used to be a pirate ship, and it's still flying. If it's survived this long, then I think it's still got a bright future ahead of it."

"That simple, huh?"

"It's no accident the ship's made it this far. When it was a pirate ship, and after becoming a training ship, the crew sometimes had to make tough decisions. Even a single slip-up is enough to ground a starship."

Jenny looked at Marika.

"It's tough being president. There's a lot of responsibility. Marika, I want you to consider some worst-case scenarios. Come up with a plan for every contingency."

"Yes sir!"

"We'll need to explain to the rest of the crew that we're being chased by a ghost ship, and that they need to prepare themselves for a fight."

"And that's the gist of her plan," Misa said, reading the proposal displayed on the handy computer at her desk. She seemed amused. "Can you believe it? She knows there are pirates on board, and she's cutting us out of her plans to fight against some unknown enemy."

"Well, I did kind of assume they were planning something like that, regardless."

Kane scrolled through the flowchart on his personal computer, hooked into the ship's network. He seemed put out.

"This thing is full of holes. She's way too optimistic about some things, and wastes too much time thinking about others that don't actually matter."

"Even so, the core is solid," Misa said. She challenged Kane with a look. "For the first shot from a beginner, I think it's quite good. I mean, she did come up with it on her own."

"‘Quite good?’ It's amazing. Considering she has no training or combat experience, I can't fault her for it. With a little bit of instruction she'll be a monster."

Misa shot him a smug smile.

"So, what are you going to do?"

"If they want to deal with this on their own, I'm inclined to let them. I may be their teacher, but in the end I'm only along as an advisor."

"Since when were you a teacher?"

"Since Hakuoh Girls Academy made me one," Kane said, straightening his necktie. "If you're going to do field work, you might as well put your heart into it."

"Just make sure you don't get too carried away with it," Misa called out to Kane as he made his way to the sick bay door. "I might fix whatever scrapes and bruises you find yourself with, but if anything happens to those girls it'll be the end of you."

"Then I guess I need to make sure my precious little students make it back home safely."

That evening, the Odette II with its abundance of sensing equipment, managed to succeed in spotting its pursuer.

"Found it!" Lynn shouted from the cyberwarfare console. "Seven hundred thousand kilometers away, in the direction of the sun. The signature is just a pinprick, but I think this is it."

"Can you identify it?" Jenny asked from the captain's chair.

"I can't make out any definite specs, not with its size and at this distance, but it's probably a tiny, stealthed, unmanned probe."

Lynn used the visual sensors to capture a pixelated, magnified image of the target.

"It's longer than it is wide, but no more than a meter at its largest point. You see these little buggers a lot."

"I've run a scan using the solar sensor."

Lynn brought up the image of the Tau Ceti star captured by the Odette II's solar scanner on the bridge's main display. Too bright to view directly from the surface of Umi-no-ake, the high definition image showed the G-type star in real time, with all its spots and flares.

"Technically it’s for solar observation, but if we know there's something there we can use it to help search. In theory, there are advantages to a ship staying close to the sun."

Jenny took another look at the data that had been extrapolated from the scans.

"Our ship's standard radar won't be able to track something that size, especially not with the sun behind it. We might be able to see it using the more precise high-frequency radar, though."

"But if we use the HF radar, the ghost ship will probably show up again," Marika said, reading the same data off the cyberwarfare console. Jenny cast a glance her way.

"But how?"

"The probe could be loaded with the signature of an appropriate non-existent ship," Lynn said, as she attempted to refine the data from the sensors. "You can recreate a ship’s overall radar signature by reconstructing it from the blueprints. When it's hit by radar, instead of returning the actual ship's signature, it sends back the pattern of the fake ship, tricking whoever's watching into believing it's a different ship."

"That would make for quite a convenient decoy. Can they really do that?"

"All you have to do is broadcast the right doppler response mixed with some noise back to the source whenever you're hit with radar. With a fast enough computer and a high-end transmitter, it shouldn't be that hard."

"Maybe we should use the HF radar, to test if you're right?"

"If we already have this good a read on it, I don't think there's much reason to confirm the signature," Marika said. She looked at the data on the probe; its position nearly overlapped with the sun.

"If we do use the HF radar and the ghost ship shows up again, we'd have to respond appropriately, and that might be enough to make them suspect that we're onto them. It would be weird if we didn't react to spotting a ghost ship during normal flight, and since our pursuer is just a small, unarmed probe, it's probably better to just ignore it, rather than risk raising their suspicions."

Jenny looked to Lynn for her opinion.

"If our goal is to figure out where they are and what we're up against, we should be safe ignoring it. We still need to be prepared to fight back, but either way, this probe isn't the real enemy."

"But if they do attack after we approach Suna-no-aka, won't they use this chaser as an antenna? It might be difficult from here, but if we can use the gravity sensors or something to figure out the settings on their FTL comm link, maybe we could hit back at them through it.”

"You mean try to take over their chaser without them noticing?" Lynn asked. She gave Marika a flabbergasted look, then looked back and forth between the sensor data and the active cyberwarfare system.

"Lynn, if you can't do it, just say so," Jenny said, offering her an out.

"It's not that I can't do it, necessarily," Lynn said. She sat there thinking, tapping her finger against her head.

"If the thing's connected to the network then we can take it over—I've done it before. But trying to tamper with a probe from the inside of a ship…it's wireless instead of a hardline, but maybe if I could spoof the authentication. Can I hook my computer up to this thing?"

"I hope you're not planning on messing with the Odette II?" Jenny said. She fixed her glare on Lynn. "You have permission, as long as you promise not to mess with our systems or take any shortcuts that will give us headaches later on."

Jenny glanced at the open door to the bridge. Kane had headed down to the engine room to see if there were any adjustments he could make that might improve the engine’s power output.

"Just don't tip off our teacher. We need to make sure we can leave this ship behind for the next generation of students."

"I won't. Though I gotta say, it looks like our predecessors did put some work into it. Or maybe that was just routine maintenance. Marika, could you watch this while I go grab HAL?" She referred to her precious computer using her own pet name for it rather than its model.

"While we're at it, I also want to make a little course adjustment."

Marika's hands moved across the control panel, cobbling together a new, impromptu route.

"What the…?"

"Our original course had the Odette II circling around the far side of Suna-no-aka. If we start our turn earlier, we can circle around through the inward-facing side of the planet. It's a nice little shortcut, right?"

Marika used the main bridge display to overlay their original route on top of the one she had just hammered out.

"This gives us more wiggle room in our flight plan, and shaves a little bit off our estimated return to the station."

"You’re changing our route just to save some time?" Jenny asked, turning towards Marika. "I'm sure there's more to it than that."

"The main reason is to restrict the enemy's movements."

Marika stood up from her seat at the cyberwarfare console, thinking of how to easily explain her reasoning. She thrust her hand into the holographic display of their projected route.

"We're just about to enter into Suna-no-aka's gravity well. While the planet and its surroundings have been inside our sensor range for some time, we still haven't been able to find any sign of a ship that might try to interfere with us. If they really are out there, I can only think of one reason that we haven't been able to see them. They must be hiding somewhere."

"So where's their hiding spot?"

"From where we are now, there are two places the Odette II's radar can't reach. One is the far side of Suna-no-aka, and the other is the interior of the sun, where the radiation is too strong for the radar to get a reading."

"Can't we use the solar sensor like we just did?"

"That takes too much time to be useful in an actual battle. But if our enemy is hiding in the planet's shadow instead of on the sunward side, it'll be to our advantage to have the sun at our backs."

"That's the first rule of dogfighting, isn't it? Always stay closer to the sun. All right, we'll deviate from our filed flight plan, but let's keep it within the margin of error—we don't want to get in the way of any other ships."

Marika nodded enthusiastically.

"There's one more benefit to taking this shortcut."

"And what might that be?"

"Instead of passing closest to the planet on the morning of the fourth day, cutting inside its orbit means we'll hit it in the middle of the third night."

"So Kane and Misa will be fast asleep in their beds?" Jenny said, folding her arms as she contemplated their schedule. "It's possible they'll wait until the morning after to attack, though."

"If they do, then we'll be that much further from the planet when it happens."

Marika moved her hand across the holographic projection of their route.

"If my initial guess is right, and their ship is hiding on the far side of Suna-no-aka, moving inside its orbit will give us much more sunlight to accelerate with. Once we're past the apex of our orbit we'll be leaving the Tau Ceti star behind, and it's smooth sailing all the way back to Umi-no-ake. If they come after us before then, if the timing is off, or worst of all if nothing happens at all, then you can put all the blame on me."

"Wouldn't nothing happening be the best outcome?" Jenny said, smiling at Marika. "Of course, that'd be quite a letdown after they went through the trouble to send a stealthed probe after us."

"A letdown?"

"So, the final showdown happens tonight?" Jenny's eyes darted towards the captain's control panel, at the clock displaying the current Galactic Standard Time. "Looks like we've got a long night ahead of us."

By and large, starships traveling across the galaxy operate according to Galactic Standard Time.

Patrolling warships—which may need to respond to an emergent situation at a moment's notice—are crewed in shifts regardless of the time of day, but automated civilian vessels and passenger liners divide Galactic Standard Time into day and night.

The training vessel Odette II was no exception. The entirety of their training voyage was to take seven days, but their schedule was divided into four-hour shifts like a regular ship, and things were designed so that, as long as there were no emergencies, the crew could sleep at night.

The only time the bridge was left with a two-person watch was between midnight and four AM, but the number of bridge crew decreased after dinner, and increased again following breakfast.

However, after their course was changed on the third day to take them closer to the Tau Ceti star, the Odette II's bridge remained fully staffed even into the night.

"Has it started?" Marika asked, returning to the bridge just before midnight, Galactic Standard Time.

"Not yet," the first-year in the communications officer's seat answered, watching the clock out of the side of her eye. "You said the most dangerous point was either right after our scheduled transmission, or when we're closest to Suna-no-aka, right?"

"That's right…"

Marika looked around the bridge. Everyone occupied the same positions they had earlier in the day, but things were eerily quiet. She checked the most recent traffic updates, projected on the holographic display. The simplified model of the Tau Ceti system showed only the Odette II among the orbits of the inner planets, its indicator moving slowly.

"Our next update comes on the hour, five minutes after we've passed closest to Suna-no-aka. They'll probably start after it's sent."

"I'm making the scheduled transmission," the first year communications officer said, bringing up the data sheet on the screen. "Just an update on our current location and a note that everything is operating normally, right?"

"Not going to mention the unidentified enemy ship or our preparations for battle?" Jenny asked from the captain's chair.

"I think it's best not to give anything away. If everything goes as planned, our next transmission will still say that nothing is amiss."

"Knock knock."

The door to the captain's quarters opened and Misa, wearing her labcoat, slipped inside. The desk was filled with open control panels synchronized to the captain's chair on the bridge. Kane didn't bother to turn around.

"Did anyone see you?"

"I made sure the corridor was empty. And with you intercepting everything from the shipboard monitors, I'm sure no one will notice the ship's physician making a late night house call to the captain's quarters."

"What is this, a surprise attack from the bloodstained pirate doctor?" A shiver ran down Kane's spine. "I wonder if my mind or my body will make it to tomorrow intact."

"Save the jokes for later. You know they're all on the bridge after lights out? Think they'll be okay?"

"They've got a chance, at least," Kane said, pointing at the ship status monitor in the corner of the control panel. "The first thing they did was cut off the sick bay, your quarters, and here from the shipboard monitors. They must know that the bridge can be monitored from the captain's quarters. I guess all we need to do is pretend to be asleep if they call us in case of an emergency."

"You think they'd call us?"

"If they need to. Marika's quick on her toes, she'll let us know if things go south and she needs our help."

"You've got a lot of faith in her."

"You watched her in those simulators at school. Let's see if she can put that quick thinking and decisiveness to use in command during battle."

"Anyway, what's our status?"

Misa stared intently over Kane's shoulder at the monitor panels surrounding the desk. He had even opened the three dimensional display on the battle computer, displaying every piece of information that it could.

"The scheduled update was just sent out over the FTL comm circuit—a form letter. The ship is just about to pass closest to Suna-no-aka."

He pointed at one of the displays showing the current status of the Odette II, the sunlight striking the side of the ship reflected aft as it continued its slow acceleration.

"If our girl's instincts are right, the enemy should attempt to hack us in short order."

"What, you mean like that?" Misa asked, as the compact radar display went white before their eyes.

"Here it comes!" the second-year radar operator shouted. "Our whole coverage area is filled with noise! Wow, so this is what it looks like to be jammed for real?"

"It looks exactly like the manual from the military site said it would," Lynn said, glancing at the radar display. "I can't exactly give them much credit though. Brute force saturation interference is as basic as it gets."

"Since we're supposed to be the inexperienced ones here, I guess it would help if we responded with some basic countermeasures."

The radar display at the captain's chair, centered on their current position, was also saturated with white noise.

"Honestly, at this point, being blinded isn’t that big of a problem."

Marika proceeded over to the cyberwarfare console.

"We're not going to run into anybody out here even if we fly with our eyes closed, and even without radar we can still get our bearings using sunlight and gravity. I bet we could make it back into orbit around Umi-no-ake flying just on instruments without any inconvenience."

"So what should we do?" Jenny asked from the captain's chair. "Use the FTL link and report it to station control?"

"Not yet."

Together with Chiaki who already occupied a seat at the console, Marika made sure that their cyberwarfare capabilities were all functioning properly.

"The enemy will be expecting us to open the FTL link. If they can take over our real-time communications, we'll be sitting ducks."

"But with our cyberwarfare equipment, I don't think it'd be easy for them to hack."

Lynn took her spot in the third of the cyberwarfare console's seats.

"They probably think that they can take over our ship through the comm relays while we're busy trying to deal with the radar jamming."

"Ah, there it is," Chiaki said, noticing the cyberwarfare system react. "It's possible that they wanted to launch the attacks in tandem, but if they're trying to hack us while jamming our radar, they sure are taking their sweet time."

"Good, that makes me think we can still get the jump on them. Like we planned, try to reset the radar and change frequencies—make it look like we think it's a malfunction."

The steps for dealing with a broken radar were largely set in stone.

"Right now we're set to fly on autopilot, like we would with a two-person watch crew. Take your time dealing with the radar. If we hurry it'll make them suspicious."

"I couldn't hurry even if you asked me to!"

The second-year originally assigned to the watch started by running a system check. Knowing that the cause of the problem was active jamming, immediately switching to sensors rather than altering the frequency of the radar would have been another potential remedy. But coming up with the appropriate countermeasure so quickly would have forced the enemy to respond, plunging them even deeper into an already complex hacking contest.

"System check reveals no abnormalities, including in the antenna connections. I guess the next step is to try turning it off and on again."

"Do it. What about the comm relays?"

"They're in."

Chiaki watched the steady corrosion of the dummy version of the Odette II's systems that was running in the main computer's spare memory.

"It's putting up a strong defense, more or less, but the automated security is pretty weak—it's set to ignore the main system while it deals with the radar jamming."

"You're right…"

Marika's eyes narrowed as she focused on the monitor that showed the intrusion of the copy of the Odette II's systems.

"We took protective measures because we were expecting an attack, but it's so subtle that they could still take us over without anyone even noticing."

"If they managed to take control of the ship, they'd have the run of the place—navigation, even life support."

Chiaki watched as the main computer ran through the standard procedures for preventing an outside intrusion.

"Overheat the engines, threaten the crew by turning off life support, anything they want. They call it a poor man's wave motion gun; up your spoils without ever firing a shot."

"Do you think it would help if we switched the cyberwarfare system to auto-response mode?" Marika asked, watching as the Odette II's systems were subverted, but Lynn shook her head.

"Probably not. If these are the same people who attacked us at the station, then they've already dealt with the auto-response once before."

Marika and Chiaki looked at each other, recalling what had happened when they had decided on their own to boot up the cyberwarfare system.

"Maybe it was just because of the blackout, but they ran before the system had a chance to carry out it's attack, right? At best we let the whole program play out and chase them off, but if they bolt before it's run its course then they've seen all our attack patterns—they won't work a second time. Even if we update the patterns, if that doesn't work then we fall right into their hands."

"How dreadful," Jenny said, summing up the feelings of the entire bridge crew. "I wonder how they handled cyberwarfare in the past?"

"It was always people first, same as it is today."

Lynn scanned the fully-illuminated, combat-ready control panel of the cyberwarfare console.

"Obviously when it comes to stuff like actually cracking the security or quantum code, people can't keep up—you leave that to the machines. But deciding how you're going to sneak in, how you're going to take control, that all has to be laid out first, and if it fails then you need to decide what to do next. An attack that can't be automated has to be responded to manually. Which of the pieces you already have prepared best meets the current circumstances, that needs to be decided on the spot."

"That's more hands-on than I would have thought."

"But if your opponent is the type who thinks it can all be automated, it'll be an easy victory."

"The dummy system is fifty percent subverted. More than half of the subsystems are under their control," Chiaki reported coolly.

"Re-initializing the radar," the second-year said. "If they're still jamming us, I doubt trying to restart it again will work. What should I do?"

Jenny considered the question.

"We don't know when they're going cut the interference, but I'd rather not lose the radar if we need it."

"Just disable the radar transmitter," Marika ordered. "That will make it look like we believe it's malfunctioning and tried resetting it again. If we only cut the transmitter, we can bring it back online at a moment's notice."

"Good idea. Do it, kill the radar transmitter."

The all-white radar displays on the bridge went dark.

"Is there anything else we need to do?"

"Prepare to halt the ship…"

Marika had considered how well their enemy understood solar sailers.

"If they do succeed in taking us over, the first thing they'll try to do is stop us. On a normal ship that just means cutting the engines, but I wonder if they've thought about how to lower the sails?"

"Anything else?"

"Are all of the Odette II's systems functioning normally?" Marika asked as she surveyed the bridge.

"No problems with navigation!"

"Engine is operating normally, and output is increasing without any problems."

"Rigging is all green. No problems with either the masts or the sails."

"Standard comms are currently being subjected to an external intrusion. FTL comms on standby."

"Cyberwarfare systems are okay, obviously."

"Ah, I forgot one thing," Marika cried out, a last-minute realization. "Seal all the internal bulkheads. It's protocol, just in case."

"True, we don't know what might happen. Take every precaution. Sealing the ship's internal bulkheads."

Jenny input the necessary command from the captain's chair. The main door to the bridge, left open ever since they had lifted anchor in order to make moving around easier, closed shut.

"The dummy system is one hundred percent subverted," Chiaki reported. The communications officer called out at the same time.

"External signal disconnected."

Marika cleared her throat.

"Is everybody ready?"

She could feel the eyes of the entire bridge crew watching her.

"Start the battle," she announced. Her eyes scanned the cyberwarfare console's control panel. "Initiate the cyberattack! They should show themselves once they've taken control of the ship. Bring radar back online before they've confirmed that they have control!"

The Odette II's navigational radar began broadcasting in all directions. There was no noise on the bridge radar displays, only a clear picture of the area surrounding the ship.

"There they are!" the second-year radar operator shouted. "Behind us, in the direction of Suna-no-aka. They're so cocky they've even got their transponder broadcasting."

"The Lightning 11, out of West Kyria."

Marika read the ship's name and registration from the supplementary data on the radar display. It was an old-fashioned container transport, but there was no other useful information.

"I knew it," Chiaki said across Lynn's seat. "I bet that’s the same freighter that tried to hit us on the station."

"If it is, then their transponder might be faked too."

Lynn confirmed the target's position on radar.

"They're not trying another attack, they must be confident that they've taken control of the ship. Nice."

A jarring buzzer rang throughout the bridge.

"Urgent message from the Lightning 11! It's addressed to the captain!" the third-year at the communications console shouted.

"Read it out loud."

Jenny's eyes skimmed the message as it was passed to the captain's chair.

"Roger. ‘Sender, Lightning 11. Recipient, Captain, Odette II. Your ship is now under our control. Promptly offer your surrender. We will ensure your safety if you cooperate.’ Should I read it back again?"

"A formal message and they won't even give their name? They must not think very highly of us at all. What should I write back?"

"Don't respond yet," Marika said, watching the progress of the analysis of the communications circuit with the recently appeared ship. "It hasn't been that long since they started jamming our radar. Our ship is still only supposed to have two people on watch, it would be strange if the captain responded immediately."

"Oh right, this was supposed to be some sort of ambush."

Jenny glanced down at the captain's chair monitor panels. The subverted dummy system received a short command.

"What are they doing?"

"Grabbing an image from the internal security cameras to make sure they have control of the ship," Lynn explained as she analyzed the communications relay. The response on the bridge was candid.

"What?"

"No way!"

"Peeping Toms!"

"Don't worry, when we set up the dummy system we linked it to the archived visual data. All they'll see is an empty, sleeping ship with a bored watch crew."

"Ah, but what if they sift through the footage of our quarters to watch us while we're sleeping," Chiaki said off-handed, watching the command come in over the communications relay.

"Unfortunately for them, we decided to kill all the cameras in the private areas."

A ship taken over in a cyberattack could have its drives cut, leaving it to fly under its own inertia, or have its electricity cut off, but things were apparently different when it came to solar sailers. The meager acceleration provided by the solar radiation was insignificant compared to ships powered by their own drives. With no point in trying to stop the ship, they had decided instead to use the security camera footage as a test.

"Ah, they must have realized that the watch crew wasn't reacting and assumed that we didn't know we've been hacked. They're sounding the ship's alarms."

"In other words…?"

"Since we're a bunch of know-nothing high schoolers who don't even realize we’ve been hacked, they're going to set off the alarms to politely inform us that there's an emergency. Yep, there they go," Chiaki said, neatly summarizing for Jenny what the attackers were trying to do to the Odette II.

"So the whole ship is supposed to be asleep, and they want to wake us all up," Jenny said, giggling. "And when the whole crew rushes to the bridge and realizes that the ship won’t listen to us, in the midst of our panic we notice the offer of surrender in the mailbox. I suppose as the yacht club's ditzy president I should send them some sort of confused reply?"

"Route trace complete!" Lynn shouted. Marika scanned the cyberwarfare console's control panel. The screens that had previously been filled with automated streams of data had fallen silent.

"The chaser is acting as an FTL relay maintaining a direct link back to their den. Pretty sloppy security for a hacker."

"Okay," Marika said, looking up at the captain's chair. "You can respond now."

"Understood."

Jenny merrily typed out her reply.

"Sender, Captain, Odette II…no, make that Yacht Club President Jenny Dolittle. Recipient, Captain, Lightning 11. Body, you're an idiot. Full stop."

"Huh?"

Marika turned back to face Jenny, assuming she had misheard.

"Body, you're an idiot. Should I repeat that?"

"Not necessary. Lynn, start hacking the Lightning 11 as soon as the reply is sent."

"Roger. There goes our reply, and…"

As the brief message was sent off to the pursuing container ship, the Odette II launched its surprise attack.

The Lightning 11 was bombarded with a cascade of interference meant to disrupt its radar and sensors, directed from the antennas of the Odette II's extended masts, far exceeding the reach of normal starships. At the same time, the Lightning 11's standard and faster-than-light communications relays were struck by a furious data intrusion designed to take over its main systems.

"I figured they were more than just amateurs," Chiaki said, watching as the Lightning 11 immediately took countermeasures against the radar and communications interference. She moved on to their next trick. The standard tactic against jamming was to shift the radar's frequency band, and there were several ways to avoid communications interference.

"But our cyberwarfare gear's got all sorts of upgrades. You really think we'll let you get away that easily?"

The Odette II switched its jamming frequencies to match the new range chosen by the Lightning 11. As if as an afterthought, the Lightning 11 resumed its jamming of the Odette II.

"Too slow!"

Now that they knew where their opponent was, a temporary loss of radar wouldn't be a problem.

"Is that all you got?"

Chiaki laughed as she compared to the strength of the Lightning 11's interference to what they were capable of outputting.

"At this level, all we have to do is crank up the power and we'll crush them."

"You better believe we've got power to spare!" Lynn said, entrusting the radar to Chiaki just as she finished breaking through the Lightning 11's off-the-shelf security safeguards.

"The absurdly large antennas that come from being a sailing ship certainly help, but we can also throw all that extra engine power into the ECM. In terms of power alone we've got modern cyberwarfare ships beat."

Lynn cheerfully entered one command after another.

"All right, they're ours!" she shouted with glee. "And it was even easier than I thought it'd be. We've got total control of their ship. We can make them do whatever we want now."

"Power down their engine," Marika ordered immediately. "Try to leave them just enough power that they can still use their comms, but make sure everything else goes."

"Right away. Initiating emergency engine shutdown. Should I cut their auxiliary backups too?"

Lynn's fingers raced across the cyberwarfare console's panel.

"Uh…huh…"

"What's wrong?"

"It's just…I'm getting some strange resistance…"

"Resistance?" Jenny queried, turning towards Lynn. "Is the equipment malfunctioning?"

"No, it's not that. Up until now it was like I had stuck my hand into their systems and was rummaging around, but then it suddenly disappeared…"

Just then the cyberwarfare console began sounding an unexpected and unfamiliar warning. It was met with another, different-sounding warning from the communications console.

"The circuit with the Lightning 11 is shut down!"

"No, it's not the comm circuit!" Lynn said, poring over the cyberwarfare console's displays. "The Lightning 11 cut the power once they realized they'd been taken over!"

Few on the bridge were able to grasp what Lynn was talking about.

"What do you mean!?"

"What I mean is that after we cut through their system like a hot knife through butter, they took the whole ship's computer offline!"

The bridge filled with an uneasy silence.

The first one to break it was Jenny.

"Didn't you say we were a match for a dedicated ECM ship?"

"That's just it, they shut down the computer and are flying the ship manually! There's nothing our cyberwarfare gear can do against that!"

"Some sort of energy wave approaching!" the radar operator screamed.

"What do you mean, an energy wave!?"

"They could be trying to hit us with a beam cannon," Chiaki suggested, the only one on the bridge to have kept her cool. "Energy beams are like a bundle of compressed, high-density energy, so they produce an effect that looks like lightning on the displays. They show up more beam-like on FTL radar."

"A beam cannon!?"

The bridge erupted in shrieks.

"But isn’t their computer supposed to be offline!?"

"As long as they've got power they can still manage, somehow. The computer's not the only part of a ship. Everything becomes a lot harder without it, but not impossible."

"Here comes another one!" the radar operator shouted.

"I'm not picking up any radar or comm signals. How are they still targeting us!?"

"You can still aim, even without radar," Chiaki said, her voice remaining calm. "Standard turrets still include optical sights to aid in targeting."

"Optical sights!?" Jenny screamed. The term was unfamiliar to her. "The hell? How are they supposed to hit anything at long range without radar!?"

"Like I said, you put your eye up to the scope and line up the shot through the crosshairs on a telescope."

"They're aiming by eye!?"

"And adjusting the beam cannon by hand too, probably."

Chiaki stared up at the diagram of their plotted course, her look one of pity.

"Obviously it's not going to be anywhere near as accurate as using fire control radar. I doubt they'll have an easy time hitting us this far away."

"There's another one!"

The high-speed beam flashed across the radar, and even though it passed by the Odette II by a wide margin, the radar operator screamed nonetheless.

"That one was closer than before!"

"Was it just luck? Or maybe they're adjusting with each shot."

"What do we do? We can't just let them keep firing, can we? We don't have a beam cannon of our own, or even shields or a deflector screen!"

"Don't worry, the Lightning 11 can't move while they're trying to snipe at us. If we use the drives to accelerate and put more distance between us…"

"No!" Marika shouted suddenly. "If we fire up our drives now, it'll give away our position on both visual and infrared sensors!"

"But the further away we get, the harder it'll be to hit us with the beam…"

"The high frequency radar!" Marika exclaimed, leaping out of the cyberwarfare console seat and ricocheting her way to the sail operator's console. "Try to get as accurate a reading as you can on the enemy ship's position."

"What are you thinking of doing?" Chiaki asked, moving from the cyberwarfare console over to the fire control radar. "You come up with some secret weapon?"

"All we need to do is disorient them!"

Marika scanned the control panel for the fully deployed solar sails. They were all controlled by a precise computer that factored in the distance from and position relative to the sun, and the ship's intended heading.

"Um…"

She tried to picture the Odette II, positioned diagonally to the sun, and the shape of the masts and their sails arranged in a triangle around the ship.

"Another energy wave!"

Without windows on the bridge, the external sensors were the only warning of incoming fire. The radar operator called out the fourth shot from the beam cannon.

"Getting a precise fix on the Lightning 11's location using the high frequency radar."

Manipulating the fire control radar's control panel, Chiaki sent the resulting coordinates to the sail operator's console.

"Is this good enough?"

"Got it!"

Marika read the six basic numbers off the display and used them to picture the resultant point in space as her fingers danced across the sail operator's control panel.

"Four hundred thousand kilometers away, about thirty meters wide…that’s good enough, we just point to where they are and the computer should handle the rest automatically."

She input the numbers to adjust all of the sails attached to each of the fore, mizzen, and mainmasts.

"Now!"

She pounded the control panel and the sails began their adjustments.

A faint vibration shook the bridge.

"What's that!?"

"Nothing, all you're feeling is the movement from all of the masts adjusting themselves."

"What did you do?" Jenny asked, as Marika appeared to have completed her task.

"The solar sails reflect practically a hundred percent of the sunlight."

Jenny glanced at the clock displaying the current Galactic Standard Time.

"If we adjust them so that they're focused to the rear of the Odette II…"

"Then you can concentrate all of the light from the full sails on a single point."

Jenny finally grasped Marika's plan.

"It makes sense in theory, but I don't think sunlight is enough to incinerate a starship…"

"We don't need to incinerate it."

Marika's eyes were fixed on the shipboard clock.

"If they're targeting us visually, then all we need to do is blind them."

The effect should have been instant.

"Have they fired again?"

"Nothing yet," Chiaki answered from the fire control radar. "They should have taken another shot by now."

"Any movement?" Jenny asked the radar operator. The navigational radar was showing clear space.

"None…nothing's changed, they're still moving under inertia…wait a second, I think their infrared signature is rising?"

"Wouldn't firing the beam like that make them heat up?"

"Right after they fire, but the heat sinks are supposed to cool it down between shots. Without any way to radiate the heat, simply firing it would cause it to overheat."

Jenny looked on curiously as she listened to Chiaki's explanation.

"Could it be the light focused from the solar sails that's causing them to heat up?"

"I've got movement!" the radar operator shouted. "Not much, but the Lightning 11 just moved."

"What direction? Are they following us?"

"Um, it was so faint that I can't tell. Hold on, I'm picking up another ship!"

"Another ship!?"

The eyes of the entire bridge crew focused on the radar displays of their respective control panels.

"One ship above us…no wait, there's another one below us!?"

The Odette II's radar was picking up two ships moving at high speed, one from either direction in respect to the Tau Ceti star's orbital plane.

"Looks like reinforcements have arrived," Chiaki said. Marika turned to face her.

"Reinforcements? Both of them?"

"I'm picking up a transponder. The ship above us is…the pirate ship Bentenmaru!?"

Marika blinked unconsciously as she stared at Chiaki. The radar operator made another announcement.

"The other ship is…the pirate ship Barbarossa?"

"Ah, that would be my ship."

Chiaki stood up from the fire control radar, faced the captain's chair, and bowed.

"My apologies for the late introduction. I'm Chiaki Kurihara, daughter of Kenjo Kurihara, captain of the pirate ship Barbarossa."

The two pirate ships that had suddenly appeared on the Odette II's radar hurtled towards the Lightning 11, almost as if they were racing to be the first to reach it. The Lightning 11, its computer shutdown to avoid being hacked by the Odette II, had no means of fighting back. Without radar it would be slow to even discover them, and at least from the perspective of the Odette II's crew, there was little hope for an easy escape from the two speedy pirate vessels.

Precision fire from the pirates blew away the beam cannon disguised as a shipping container without even a hint of resistance, and the Lightning 11 surrendered unconditionally.

It was around that time that a system defense force flotilla appeared from the direction in which the Odette II was headed. The powerful fleet, consisting of four escorts and a light carrier, merely exchanged formal greetings with the Odette II as they passed each other before continuing on to the captured Lightning 11.

There was no word on what happened to the Lightning 11 after that, beyond a simple announcement from the defense force.

It was revealed in a later investigation that the Lightning 11, impounded in the vicinity of Suna-no-aka under suspicion of acting illegally and under a false registration, was a smuggler with ties to the Griffin Cartel, an interstellar criminal network. The vessel was seized, its crew arrested and handed over to detectives who specialized in space crimes.

The Odette II ferried the Hakuoh Girls' Academy Yacht Club along the rest of their training voyage as scheduled, returning safely to the Umi-no-ake way station. Despite the busier-than-usual traffic when they arrived, the Odette II was inexplicably greeted with advanced docking privileges.

And Marika… Marika became a space pirate.

Prologue: Pirates' Way

Chapter 1: Hakuoh Girls’ Academy High School

Chapter 2: The Transfer Student and the New Teacher

Chapter 3: Way Station

Chapter 4: The Far Side of the Sun

Epilogue: Pirates' Way