Episode 46

"Hey, Teiro. You notice?"

In the control room of the Plum, Marl spoke without taking her eyes off the monitor. Taro gave a distracted grunt of affirmation.

"Front and back. Both about tens of thousands of kilometers out, I’d wager. When you’re a beauty like the Plum, you’re bound to attract a few stalkers."

The Plum’s sensors had picked up a faint, rhythmic pulse of particles. It was the kind of background noise that Taro or Marl would have surely overlooked, but nothing got past Koume’s electronic eyes.

"It has been continuous for approximately seven hours, Mr. Teiro. I can hazard a guess as to the identity of the one behind us, but whatever is coming from the front is quite the mystery."

"Hmm, beats me. Maybe we should ask an expert."

Taro tilted his head at Koume’s report, then dragged a monitor toward him to open a channel.

"Bella-san, we’ve caught some scan sweeps from two spots, front and back. I’m guessing the guys behind us are the Imperial Military, but do you have any idea who’s pinging us from the front?"

A moment later, Bella’s voice crackled through the comms.

["Well now. I can think of a few candidates, though none of them are particularly pleasant company. If you can, give 'em some interference. No one’s going to complain if you sink a ship like that without a warning."]

Taro let out a dry, nervous laugh. Just what kind of place am I heading into?

"Alright, let’s try out the scrambler. I’ve never touched the thing before—how’s it actually work?"

"It is quite simple, Mr. Teiro. We take the various scanning particles emitted by the opposition and reflect them back in a completely chaotic, randomized fashion. If used creatively, we can even feed them false data."

"Hooh. So basically, it’s a Stealth Function, right?"

"Affirmative, Mr. Teiro. It also disrupts visible light. If we activate it, the Plum should appear as little more than a blurry, distorted mess to any other ships."

"Whoa, like I’m being censored for a broadcast? I hate that... wait. Hold on. Did I just have a stroke of genius?"

"Oh? And what would that be, Mr. Teiro? Just as a side note, the mathematics required to reverse-calculate a scrambler has absolutely zero overlap with the technology needed to strip mosaics from adult video files."

Dammit, there is no God!

Taro slid out of his seat in a heap, collapsing onto the floor in despair.

"Ugh, what are you even thinking about?" Marl groaned, looking down at him. "Wait, didn't you take a psych evaluation? Did you fail to even hit an E-rating?"

Still face-down on the floor, Taro let out a weak, pathetic mumble. "Yeah... it was a C..."

A C-rating was reserved for those with the mental maturity of a thirteen-to-sixteen-year-old. It came with a slew of parental controls and strict filters on "adult-oriented" media.

"A C-rating? Nobody actually gets those," Marl said, unimpressed. "You were just messing around and giving joke answers, weren't you? Too bad for you. You’ll have to wait until next year to retake the test."

Taro let out a pained ugu-gu groan. She had hit the bullseye.

"How was I supposed to know that stupid test would affect my daily life this much?! I’m an Iceman, for crying out loud!"

"Don't look at me. I don't make the rules," Marl replied.

"I need a legal guardian just to go out after 22:00? Give me a break..." Taro muttered, his eyes turning hollow as he stared at the floor tiles. "Whatever, I don't care anymore... Hey, Koume. Just scramble the signals from the front however you want. Who cares about the guys behind us anyway?"

Seeing Taro lose all motivation, Marl let out a heavy sigh.

"Listen, Teiro. We’re heading into Outer Space. Aren't you forgetting something?"

"Mmm... yeah, maybe. If you're looking for the empty husk of a man who’s lost his very soul, he's right here..."

"The area ahead is a lawless zone," Marl said, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "Once we’re out there, you can do whatever you want. Anything goes."

"...MY POWER IS OVERFLOWING!!"

Taro attempted a cool, cinematic neck spring to pop back onto his feet. He failed miserably, overshooting the move and slamming his forehead into the edge of his seat. Blood began to trickle down his face.

"Wait, are you okay—"

"UNCENSORED!! UNCENSORED!!"

Huffing like a steam engine, Taro scrambled back into his seat. With a speed and precision he had never shown before, he began to configure the BISHOP. Despite it being his first time handling the interface, he re-coded the Scrambling Function into something incredibly robust in the blink of an eye.

"...Sometimes, I really don't understand you," Marl muttered.

Koume simply smiled in silent agreement.

---

Far behind the Plum II, a fleet of ten ships—rendered invisible by sophisticated Optical Camouflage—drifted through the void. They surveyed the area with high-performance sensors, emitting carefully disguised pulses. One ship, bristling with antennas designed solely for electronic warfare, received a strange return signal.

"Admiral Dean, I have a report."

In the airless vacuum of space, physical sound was a non-factor. Yet, in the heavy silence of the Command Room, the soldier stood so stiffly it seemed as if a steel rod had been hammered through his spine.

"What is it? Don't tell me you’ve lost them. If you have, I’ll be forced to transfer you to the bottom of a maintenance pit," Admiral Dean replied without looking up. He was slumped deep into his command chair, eyes fixed on the Radar Screen, a deep furrow etched between his brows.

"No, sir. We are maintaining our lock on the target. That is not the issue... however..."

The soldier, normally a paragon of military brevity, hesitated. Dean glanced up, his gaze sharp. The soldier met the Admiral’s eyes, looking utterly bewildered.

"Nothing like this has ever happened before, sir. There is a possibility that our presence has been exposed."

"What!?" Dean barked, his voice cracking with uncharacteristic shock. The soldier blinked in surprise but quickly regained his composure.

"Five minutes and twenty-two seconds ago, the target activated a scan scrambler. We initially speculated it was aimed at the other fleet we reported earlier, but our own scans are also being disrupted. As a result... well..."

He gestured toward the massive, five-meter-tall main screen of the control room. The tactical display vanished, replaced by a giant, anime-style illustration of a woman in a very skimpy swimsuit. The woman was reaching for a bikini strap that had come undone while covering her chest with her other hand. Over her ample, overflowing bust, a thick, digital mosaic—the kind used for psychiatric viewing restrictions—had been applied. It was a sight that was both absurd and deeply irritating to look at.

"The target's silhouette is currently being rendered like... that. It appears they are using visible light scrambling to project this image. Quite frankly, Admiral, I have no idea how such a feat is even technically possible."

"As if I would know!" Dean roared, slamming his fist onto his desk in frustration.

---

"Ooooh... so that’s a Stargate over here. It’s long and skinny, totally different from the Empire’s."

Taro gaped at the exterior feed on his display. Unlike the cylindrical gates used back in Imperial Territory, this one was rectangular and elongated. As the camera zoomed in, he could see dozens of ships lined up along the massive structure, which stretched for several kilometers.

"It is a very ancient model of Stargate, Mr. Teiro. This design hasn't been used in the Empire for centuries. Ships must line up on top of it to warp. Since they have to be in a single straight line, it is significantly less efficient than the Imperial cylinders."

"I get it... they still have to avoid bumping into each other, so they don't line up front-to-back. I guess being able to park ships all around the inside of a cylinder is way better."

"Still, this design was the backbone of the Great Expansion," Marl added. "It was used for nearly a thousand years before the cylindrical gates were even invented. You can't beat it for reliability."

From this distance, the massive machine looked like a giant sheet of iron floating in the dark. Taro thought back on the days of travel it had taken just to get here and asked the first question that came to mind.

"So, why can't we just jump directly here from a gate in Imperial Territory? I thought you said the gates just 'push and pull' between each other."

Koume offered a pleasant smile.

"Mr. Teiro, imagine that there are invisible lines drawn across the space we have been traveling through for the past few days. If a place is outside the Empire’s influence, it means there is another power standing in the Empire's place."

Taro looked up at the ceiling, processing that. "An invisible line, huh... And by 'power,' you mean those Outlaw Corps and gangs. So, basically..."

He searched for the right word, one that felt appropriately archaic.

"It’s like a Foreign Country."

A strange silence fell over the room. Taro panicked for a second, wondering if he’d said something offensive, while Marl looked at Koume with a puzzled expression.

"A 'Foreign Country' is a term used to refer to any nation other than one’s own when multiple sovereign states exist, Miss Marl," Koume explained.

Marl nodded, her face clearing. "Huh. You sure know some fancy words. But yeah, it’s exactly like a Foreign Country. Most of the folks out here wouldn't exactly throw a parade for the Imperial Military, so they make it as hard as possible for the Empire to just drop in."

Taro realized then that in a galaxy where the Empire was the only known government, the very concept of a "Foreign Country" must have been dead for thousands of years.

["Boy, you got a second?"]

Bella’s voice broke through his historical musing. A moment later, an unfamiliar interstellar map appeared on Taro’s BISHOP.

["Commit that map to memory, kid. The blue zones are neutral territory established by the local powers. As long as you stay in the blue, you’re mostly safe. But the moment you step out of those lines, you’d better have your eyes in the back of your head."]

Taro squinted at the map. "...Whoa, are you kidding me?"

"What is it, Mr. Teiro?"

"The only blue spots on this entire map are the tiny circles right around the Stargates. Just how 'wild west' is this place?"

The crew shared a round of dry, nervous smiles. Taro felt a flicker of regret for coming to such a godforsaken corner of the universe, but it was quickly drowned out by the reckless, buzzing excitement of youth. He summed up the situation in one word.

"Well... I guess this is an adventure."