Chương 324: 138.Hunters and Hunted 1

The second I finished speaking, the silence on the bridge became harder to sit through than the airlock implosion itself. Not because everyone disagreed. Exactly the opposite. Because everyone knew I was right. We really were throwing punches at empty air. The problem wasn't that the Yukikaze's punches lacked weight. It wasn't that the tactical station was having a run of bad luck today. The problem was that the thing simply refused to put its entire body into our dimension. It only extended a fraction.

Just enough to crush an airlock. And then it pulled back. Incredibly shameless. And incredibly effective.

"Let me think." Ash stared at the anomalous axis still sliding slowly along the aft port quarter, his voice low as water under ice. I didn't add anything. The stupidest thing a person can do in a moment like this is assume they have to speak just to prove they're participating. What the Yukikaze needed right now wasn't courage. It definitely wasn't filler. Akari was still tracking the anomalous shifts.

Lan layered the noise void and the starlight refraction into multiple translucent observation membranes, as if trying to trace a hound's bite marks out of the folds of the universe itself. Aida watched the Kamikaze's superconducting confinement ring temperatures while simultaneously pulling the damage-control data from Airlock Three into a new structural-loss schematic.

In the lower right of the main display, the bright red internal damage diagram looked exactly like someone had gouged a piece of meat out of the Yukikaze's own body. … Ugly.

"Kamikaze cooldown: eleven minutes, twenty seconds," Aida said.

"Additional note: Airlock Three wasn't blown up. It was a structural collapse caused by localized spatial compression. In other words, if that thing picks another spot, we still can't rely on the shields to block it." Jess drew a very quiet breath.

"That's not a sneak attack anymore. That's just cheating."

"There is no cheating on a battlefield," Maki said coldly.

"There is only whether you live long enough to change the rules back." Jess twitched her mouth, but didn't reply. I had to admit, Maki was right. And it was very Maki. Her version of comforting someone was roughly equivalent to hitting them on the back with a steel ruler — rational, effective, and entirely unlikable. Ash finally spoke.

"The enemy's greatest advantage right now isn't firepower. It's positional asymmetry." I looked up.

"It doesn't need to fully expose itself to touch us," Ash said, eyes on the anomalous axis.

"So we don't look for a ship. We look for the traces it leaves when it touches here." …Here it comes. My spine straightened almost immediately. Because that meant he and I had landed on the exact same thought. We don't aim at the target. We prep the board first.

"Tactical Officer," Ash called.

"Here." He watched the main display, tone not raised, but hard enough to make your heart clench on reflex.

"Prepare Type-93 Graviton Spatial Torpedoes. Quadrants one through four, fan-spread deployment. I want this area blanketed with a gravity field." It was an order so perfectly Ash — cold, ruthless, exact, not a wasted syllable. It wants to hide in a higher dimension and take bites out of us? Fine. Then we turn this space into a layer of ash that records footprints.

"Understood." I pressed my hand to the tactical launch panel, cutting fast into the torpedo allocation page.

"Type-93 Graviton Spatial Torpedoes, Quadrants one through four, fan-spread prep." Jess had already caught up beside me, syncing the ballistic spread angles and dispersion parameters. No garbage talk from her right now — just fingers moving like her life depended on it. That was a good thing. The people who'd survived this long on the Yukikaze might have terrible mouths, but they all knew exactly when to shut up and work.

"Tubes one and two, standby complete," I said.

"Three and four, standby complete," Jess followed. Aida added, without looking up:"A reminder to everyone: these aren't standard torpedoes. Once the graviton spatial warheads deploy, they form a short-duration gravity-dust net in the localized area. A normal vessel hitting it would call it a nuisance. A higher-dimensional target stepping into it should, in theory, trigger a repulsion or compression reaction. In theory." If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

My eyebrow twitched.

"I really hate it when you add 'in theory' at times like this."

"You're welcome," Aida said.

"I hate it when people have excessive fantasies about theory at times like this." Excellent. Still not a single person on this ship willing to speak like a normal human being. Reassuring. The bridge went quiet. Not a relaxed quiet. The kind of dead silence that only happens when everyone compresses their attention into a single needle, waiting to stab an invisible monster. The deep-space wasteland outside remained unnervingly black. No enemy ship. No incoming fire.

Nothing we could openly and honestly shoot back at. Only that higher-dimensional anomalous axis, flickering in and out of perception like the pain at the edge of a wound.

"Movement." Akari suddenly leaned forward a fraction. Not a large motion. Just a slight tilt. But for her, that was roughly equivalent to the alarm siren standing up from its chair.

"Gravity ripple recurring. Bearing two-one-zero, distance four thousand. Amplitude shifting… no, signal is attenuating." Her hands flew across the console, pulling up a second layer, elongating, magnifying, and overlapping the distorted waveform of the brief gravity leak. The wave didn't look like the smooth wake left by a normal ship. It looked like the shadow of a snake that had been pinned by the neck and was frantically trying to slide deeper into the dark.

"Damn it," Jess swore under her breath.

"The bastard is hiding deeper."

"Not hiding," I said, eyes locked on the rapidly thinning distortion.

"It's shrinking."

"Is there a difference?"

"Yes," I said.

"Hiding is fleeing. Shrinking means it's getting ready to take a second bite." Jess went silent. Because she knew I wasn't just setting a mood. We weren't chasing a target that was afraid of being caught. We were gambling against a hunter that knew we were close to tracing its outline, and still dared to stay nearby, waiting for an opening. It was betting we couldn't cast the net wide enough. We were betting it needed to touch our world one more time. There was no dignity in this kind of bet.

Only a question of who stuck their hand into the blade first.

"Acting Captain," I said.

"It's retracting its contact surface. One second slower, and the dispersion angle might not be wide enough to cover its current displacement node." Ash didn't hesitate.

"Now. Hoshino, fire. Immediately." I didn't even say yes, sir. Because right now, that extra syllable would have been too slow. My fingers came down.

"Torpedo tubes one and two — fire!" Without pausing, my other hand slammed down the second launch sequence.

"Three and four — fire!" Four low pneumatic thuds resonated from the Yukikaze's outer hull. Not the satisfying crack of open fire. More like precision hunting gear being pushed smoothly from the hunter's hand into the dark. Four Type-93 Graviton Spatial Torpedoes flew out along their pre-set dispersion angles, deploying their warheads in succession in the invisible deep, forcibly laying a short-lived gravity-dust field across Quadrants one through four — space that should have been entirely empty.

Simply put: we threw a handful of ash into an invisible wind. If the thing was still there. If it still wanted to bite. If it truly had mass, and part of its foot was still planted on this side— Then it would definitely leave something behind. Three seconds. Five seconds. Ten seconds. The bridge was so quiet you could almost hear how undignified everyone's own heartbeat sounded.

Roy kept his attitude corrections to the absolute minimum, as if afraid that shaking the ship even slightly would wipe away a critical ripple. Lan held one earpiece pressed tight, her other hand resting on the edge of the panel, breathing very lightly. Aida stared at the gravity-dust telemetry. The expression that usually looked like she was judging the entire world's efficiency had narrowed into a near-ruthless focus. Akari was the most extreme. She looked like she was about to physically merge with the sensors.

Then, she spoke.

"Caught it." Her voice was still flat. But precisely because it was so flat, the sentence landed that much harder.

"Repulsion effect detected in the gravity net. Bearing two-one-five. Gravity field is coalescing inward… no, this isn't natural backflow. Solid mass on the higher-dimensional boundary is displacing the micro-dust outward." In the center of the main display, the gravity dust scattered across the void began to deform. It was deeply uncomfortable to look at. It wasn't the outline of a ship. Not a bow, not a stern, not a hull, not an engine bay, not any normal structure that would let a three-dimensional brain relax.

It looked more like a geometric error forcibly shoved into our field of view. A mass of extreme distortion, an ever-shifting shadow forced into visibility within the gravity-dust field. It had no stable front or back, high or low. Certain sections that should have repelled each other overlapped instead; certain ridgelines seemed to bulge outward, only to collapse inward the next second.

It looked like something that didn't belong in this universe, pressed down by us in the crudest way possible to reveal a small cross-section. If I had to find a metaphor— It was like looking at a perfectly empty ocean, and suddenly an impossible wave-pattern rises to the surface, telling you there's something underneath, and that something knows how to hide much better than your ship does.

"That's it…" Jess murmured.

"No." I stared at the twisted cross-section, cold crawling up my back.

"That's not it yet. That's just a layer of shadow we scraped off it." Lan had already overlaid another analysis protocol.

"Gravity-signature comparison initiated." It was the gravity fingerprint this monster left behind as it pressed against our world from the higher-dimensional boundary. A few seconds later, Lan looked up. There was no victory on her face. Only the cold look of someone saying: I really didn't want to confirm this, but unfortunately, it's true.

"Acting Captain. Gravity-signature comparison complete." She paused for a fraction of a second.

"Confirmed: Galactic Imperial Military hyperdimensional attack submarine — Seawolf." No one on the bridge cheered. If anyone cheered at a moment like this, I'd suspect their brain had been crushed along with Airlock Three. Because between we found you and we can kill you lay an entire, very ugly stretch of survival. We just finally knew the name of the dog that bit us.

And right now, that thing was caught in the gravity-dust field like a higher-dimensional jackal that had a patch of skin scraped off by a hunting net — edges twisting, outline shifting, but still not truly dragged into our world.

"Hostile target confirmed." Maki's voice was half a degree colder than before.

"Seawolf higher-dimensional cross-section partially visible." Ash didn't immediately issue a second attack order. He just watched the shifting geometric shadow on the main display, his eyes heavy, like someone calculating an equation that could not afford a single error. I knew what he was looking at. He wasn't looking at the enemy appeared, good, open fire. He was looking at: Exactly how much of this thing is actually on our side right now?

Because if we just blindly bombarded that cross-section, it was highly likely we'd only blow apart a layer of shadow, letting the Seawolf shrink back deeper, only to deliver another Airlock Three-style greeting to the Yukikaze. That would be too stupid. And stupidity was the one thing the Yukikaze could least afford right now. I stared at the twisted outline, realizing my palms were completely slick with sweat. Not fear. Or rather, not just fear.

It was the frustration of finally touching the enemy, only to find the enemy was even less of a thing than I'd imagined. It wasn't a ship. At least, not yet. It was like some kind of will, reaching its teeth in from behind a higher-dimensional crack.

"…So this is what you look like," I said, low. Jess tilted her head.

"Who are you talking to?"

"That dog."

"You sound pretty aggressive."

"If I don't sound aggressive, I'm afraid it'll think I enjoy being bitten." Jess actually laughed. Short, dry, but a real laugh. And in that exact moment, the Seawolf cross-section on the main display contracted inward by one unit. Not vanished. Shrank. Like it knew that staying here meant paying a more substantial price. Akari reported immediately:"Seawolf cross-section instability rising! It's attempting to break free of the gravity net—" Ash finally spoke.

"Good." That good wasn't happiness. It was the coldness of a hunter finally seeing the prey flinch. Then he turned his gaze to me.

"Tactical Officer." I straightened my spine almost instantly.

"Here."

"Keep it pinned there." …Here we go. The fire that had been burning uncomfortably in my chest since this started finally flared upward. Because as of this moment, the Yukikaze was no longer just the one being bitten. We'd finally reached into the empty air, and touched it.