[POV: Nardia]

  Even after Tyuro’s dust vanished from the viewport, my throat still felt like I’d swallowed sand.

  The air scrubbers were working overtime, but my mood refused to follow orders. The aftershock from ultra-high-speed mode kept wobbling somewhere behind my eyes.

  “…Ueeh…”

  The second that pathetic noise escaped me, Genichiro snapped without looking up.

  “Don’t puke. If the radar operator pukes, information dies.”

  “Maybe worry about the human before the information!”

  “Humans can work until they die.”

  “The worst!”

  Ahmad’s voice stayed flat, like he was reading a checklist.

  “Don’t relax until we clear the system.”

  “We’re carrying treasure,” I muttered. “Yeah. I know.”

  Beside me, Miyu clasped her hands in her lap. Her metal fingers made a tiny kik sound as they tightened.

  She couldn’t cry, so it felt like she was building tension with her whole body instead—manufacturing fear the only way she still could.

  Ahmad sat in the main seat as always, but the actual flying was still on Shiratori’s AI.

  “Departing. Optimizing thrust for Rangata System outer boundary. Cargo: Mu-Arcium. Stabilization confirmed.”

  “Stabilization was Miyu,” I said.

  Shiratori answered with perfect machine honesty.

  “Logged. Responsible party: Miyu. Hazard level: High. Notes: Unknown substance.”

  “Stop calling it ‘unknown substance.’ That’s horror-movie wording.”

  “Fear is not a function.”

  “That’s why you’re annoying!”

  Ahmad didn’t bother engaging with the argument.

  “Proceed.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  Shiratori accelerated.

  To climb out of the system’s gravity well, the thrust built gradually—steady, layered, relentless. And that very steadiness made my skin prickle. Like watching a wave rise and realizing too late it’s the kind that eats coastlines.

  On radar, a faint blip appeared. Then another.

  At first I thought it was noise.

  But noise wasn’t this regular.

  Regular noise was an enemy that knew how to hide.

  “…Contact. Coming.”

  Genichiro’s response was instant.

  “Range.”

  “…Closing. About two hundred units. Matching our acceleration. They’re reading our shortest route.”

  Ahmad’s eyes didn’t leave the display.

  “This pattern is Grabhul.”

  The air on the bridge tightened by another notch.

  What we’d picked up on Tyuro wasn’t ore.

  It was greed, crystallized.

  And greed always followed.

  “Warning: multiple unidentified signatures. Emerging along projected course. High-energy reactions detected.”

  I hated how calm that voice was. Calm was terrifying.

  “Switch gravity-magnetic barrier to variable-phase shield mode,” Ahmad ordered. “Stealth.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  A shimmer crawled across the hull on the external feed as the barrier’s density profile changed—becoming something stranger than a simple shield. The ship’s outline felt… wrong, like the universe was being asked to ignore us.

  “Stealth?” Miyu asked.

  “It bends EM and energy flow so it passes through,” I said quickly, trying to keep my voice from shaking. “From their side… it’s like we’re not there.”

  Ahmad had once explained it as manipulating phase states—Higgs-field tricks coupled with nano-material optics, except scaled up into space itself. I didn’t fully understand it. I just knew it made my instincts itch.

  “Here!” I barked.

  The next second, light exploded in the corner of my vision.

  Not a beam.

  A round, blazing lump—an honest-to-god fireball.

  Fire in vacuum. Fire that had no right to exist. Fire that was falling toward us.

  “…A fireball?!” I shouted.

  Genichiro clicked his tongue.

  “Don’t call it like it’s fantasy— …No. It’s psychic. It really is ‘magic,’ damn it.”

  “You admitted it!”

  The fireball dove straight into our projected path.

  Shiratori rolled into an evasion arc.

  The fireball followed.

  It wasn’t thrown. It wasn’t dumb projectile physics.

  It was released—and it had intent.

  “Heat source is tracking! You’ve got to be kidding!”

  “Evading. Evading. Evading.”

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  Shiratori kept dodging with that calm voice, but every hard correction ate fuel and inertia-control budget. Even with an SER reactor, rapid inertial shifts drained the gravitonic capacitors faster than they could refill.

  Evasion meant slowing down.

  Slowing down meant they closed the gap.

  Gap closing meant the next hit got easier.

  “Genichiro! Can you shoot it?”

  “I can,” he said. “But if we shoot, we confirm our position.”

  “They already know where we are!”

  “They suspect. I don’t want to prove it.”

  “This is not the time to be picky!”

  Genichiro’s tone sharpened into pure procedure.

  “Shiratori. Raise intercept angle by three degrees. C++ gun. Scatter mode. I’ll hold the aim.”

  “Acknowledged. Weapons control: Genichiro.”

  The screen flipped to gunnery. It uses special solid bullets that can be accelerated to faster-than-light speeds.

  The barrel made a micro-adjustment. Then—an ugly, heavy vibration punched through the ship.

  No sound in space.

  But the ship’s skeleton translated recoil into something my ribs could feel.

  The intercept round hit.

  The fireball burst apart—splitting into thin streaming lines, like molten petals scattered across black velvet.

  A flower of flame bloomed in vacuum.

  It was beautiful in a way that made my stomach revolt.

  “It dropped— …No, it just scattered!”

  The fragments started to drift back together.

  Of course it did. Of course it was that kind of nightmare.

  Then something else came.

  A thin line of light—sharp as a blade.

  It didn’t fly straight. It drew a curve, slipped past—

  “Dodged!” I blurted.

  —and then the light returned.

  “Returned? Like a boomerang?! What is this?!”

  The returning lightblade grazed our flank.

  Metal screamed through the hull.

  A smell like burnt plating leaked into the ventilation, sharp enough to sting my nose.

  “Damn it,” Genichiro spat. “It can pierce variable-phase shielding!”

  “External damage: minor. Warning: repeat strike predicted.”

  “Stop being calm when you say that! It breaks my spirit!”

  “A spirit is not installed.”

  “I KNOW!”

  “They’re weaponizing shadow matter,” Ahmad said, voice steady. “Space-interference projection. It needs anchors—drones, projectors, something to hold the pattern.”

  “Save the lecture! Right now I only care whether we die!”

  “We won’t die,” Ahmad said. “But it will be painful.”

  “That’s not comforting!”

  Fireballs—now two, three.

  Returning lightblades—now angrier, nastier.

  The enemy hulls were still far, but their attacks were right here.

  Distance was cheating.

  In space, “magic” was the most unfair kind of cheating.

  On radar: three ship signatures.

  Around them: a swarm of small points.

  Drones. Projectors. Something acting as a medium—anchors for the attacks.

  “Three hulls! Lots of small reactions—attacks are coming from those!”

  Genichiro’s answer came like he’d been waiting for the confirmation.

  “Good. We kill the medium.”

  “Can we?!”

  “We will.” He didn’t spare me a glance. “Shiratori. Short-burst acceleration. Sweep with a barrage.”

  “Acknowledged. Thrust distribution changed. Short-burst acceleration.”

  “Stop accelerating! My stomach—!”

  Too late.

  My back slammed into the seat as the ship jumped.

  Ueeh.

  My body lagged behind my eyes.

  But I kept my gaze glued to radar anyway.

  Look away, die.

  Genichiro’s intercept fire stitched through the swarm.

  Two points vanished. Three.

  The moment they blinked out, the fireball’s tracking wavered—just a little.

  “It’s working!”

  “Obviously.”

  “Don’t say obviously!”

  But the enemy learned—obviously.

  The fireballs’ approach angles changed.

  Two lightblades became two at once—their curves nastier, their return paths more cruel. They started aiming for lines where evasion would be too tight to make.

  “Starboard! Two blades—returning! Returning!”

  Shiratori sideslipped.

  Barely.

  One blade still kissed us.

  Impact—shudder—warning tone.

  Air pressure shifted, the faint sense of “thinness” that made your skin crawl.

  “External damage: moderate. Auxiliary bulkheads sealed.”

  “Moderate? WHAT DOES ‘MODERATE’ MEAN?!”

  Genichiro answered like he was defining a screw size.

  “Moderate is moderate. ‘Severe’ is death. ‘Minor’ is ignore it. Moderate is infuriating.”

  “Your categories are trash!”

  Miyu lifted her head.

  Her eyes were darker than before.

  Not because she was more afraid—

  Because she’d decided.

  “…Nardia,” she said softly.

  “What.”

  “…I can do it.”

  My chest clenched.

  A girl who’d been the one we protected—who’d looked like she might shatter—was wearing the face of someone ready to protect us.

  “…I’ll throw a blind,” she whispered. “A misdirection.”

  Ahmad answered immediately.

  “Permission granted. But don’t overdo it.”

  Don’t overdo it.

  That warning alone said how dangerous her power was.

  Miyu closed her eyes and raised her hands slowly.

  Her fingertips trembled.

  Then the trembling stopped.

  And the stillness became a decision.

  “…Hide.”

  Her voice was small.

  The universe listened anyway.

  Fog didn’t exist in vacuum.

  And yet on sensors, “fog” was born.

  Heat sources scattered. Reflections broke into lies. Light bent at angles that shouldn’t have been possible.

  “…What is that?” I breathed.

  Genichiro didn’t take his eyes off the feed.

  “She’s tricking their sensors. Making what they ‘see’ unreliable.”

  “That’s terrifying!”

  “That’s why you use it.”

  “Stealth performance maximized. Miyu’s interference shows strong compatibility. Enemy tracking locks disengaging.”

  “‘Strong compatibility’ is the most robotic compliment ever!”

  “It is a fact.”

  The fireballs lost their grip and drifted off, confused, shedding their intent like embers dying in a wind that shouldn’t exist.

  The returning blades came back… and missed.

  They cut empty black instead of our hull.

  “Now!” Ahmad said. “We run. Outer boundary.”

  “Acknowledged. Stealth navigation. Thrust suppression. Reflection suppression. Route: shortest.”

  “Shortest means they’ll read us again!”

  Genichiro snapped back. “Then don’t let them read it. Make it a shape they can’t predict.”

  “That’s the part that’s hard!”

  Miyu reached out again.

  This time, the light itself seemed to smear, like the border between Shiratori and the universe had gone watery.

  Our outline thinned.

  There—but not there.

  And then Shiratori slid into shadow like she belonged in it.

  My heart hammered loud enough to feel like sound.

  I stared at radar.

  The three enemy signatures… wavered.

  Their search pattern fractured.

  Attacks stopped.

  “…Did we escape?” I let out a breath I didn’t remember holding.

  Shiratori replied, still maddeningly calm.

  “Tracking locks currently disengaged. Enemy is re-searching. Range increasing.”

  For the first time, that calm felt like salvation.

  Miyu sagged. Shoulders dropping. A human kind of exhaustion, even in a metal body.

  “…Are you okay?” I asked.

  She nodded, small.

  “…I was scared. But… we got away.”

  Genichiro grunted.

  “Good work.” Then, immediately: “But it won’t work twice.”

  “Don’t say scary things right after you praise her!”

  Ahmad’s voice lowered.

  “We hurry to Fanark. We reset our posture there.”

  My stomach sank again with that familiar bad premonition.

  But right now—

  We were alive.

  Miyu was alive.

  Mu-Arcium was still stabilized.

  Then Shiratori’s calm voice cut in again.

  “Alert. Residual signal pattern detected on stealth field. Source: unknown. Probability of passive tracking: 37%.”

  My blood ran cold. “Passive tracking? Like… a tag?”

  Genichiro’s jaw tightened. “They brushed us with something when that blade grazed. Shadow-matter residue, maybe.”

  Ahmad’s gaze flicked to the cargo readout. “Does it touch the container?”

  “Cargo bay readings: stable. Exterior field shows microscopic phase-lag irregularities. Recommend purge cycle.”

  “A purge cycle means we vent our stealth and light up like a flare,” I snapped. “That’s the opposite of stealth!”

  “It also means we don’t drag a leash behind us,” Genichiro said. “Pick your poison.”

  Miyu’s hands lifted a few centimeters, fingers hovering as if she was afraid to touch the air.

  “…I feel it,” she murmured.

  “What do you mean, you feel it?”

  Her voice stayed small, but it carried that same horrible certainty as before. “It’s… like a thin thread. Not attached to me. Attached to… the ship’s skin. Like someone scratched a rule into it.”

  Ahmad didn’t waste time on disbelief. “Can you break the thread?”

  Miyu swallowed—an unnecessary motion in a body that didn’t need it. “If I pull too hard, it might… rip our stealth with it.”

  Genichiro exhaled through his nose. “So we don’t pull. We hide it. Like burying a scent.”

  I stared at radar, watching empty space like it might suddenly blink. “We’re really going to do counter-magic maintenance in the middle of a chase.”

  “Call it what you want,” Genichiro said. “We’re doing it.”

  Ahmad’s voice was steady as iron. “Miyu. Minimal interference. Mask the irregularities. Shiratori will randomize route. Nardia, keep scanning for a re-lock.”

  “…Okay,” Miyu whispered, and raised her hands again—not with drama, but with the careful precision of someone defusing a bomb.

  The sensor fog returned, thinner this time. Not a blanket—more like a smear over a single fingerprint.

  “Phase-lag irregularities decreasing. Passive tracking probability: 18%. Route randomized. Estimated time to Fanark: 1.5 hours.”

  Nine hours.

  In a universe where fire could chase you in vacuum, nine hours was an eternity.

  I licked my dry lips and forced my voice into something like a vow.

  “Fine. Then we don’t just ‘get away’—we get away clean.”

  I kept my eyes on radar and muttered around the grit still stuck in my throat.

  “…Next time, we spot them first.”

  Space showed no mercy.

  So neither would we.

  Even if I had to survive through sheer anger and nonstop complaining, I’d keep moving forward.

  “Incoming tightbeam transmission detected. Origin: Fanark orbital control. Message header: ‘Due to the half-life, if you don’t come within the next TWO HOURS, WE WON’T BE ABLE TO PAY THE REMAINING BALANCE.’”

  My stomach dropped.