The fortress was silent when they returned. A pressurized silence that sucked the air from Kaito's lungs the moment he stepped onto the hangar floor. His ears rang, not from the storm, but from the ghost-whine of the skiff's dampeners. Or maybe just his own nerves screaming. His hands trembled, a low-level hum. He shoved them in his pockets.
Riku was already stripping his gear, movements clean and practiced. His face was pale, waxy under the LEDs. He didn't look at Kaito.
"Well," Kaito started, the word feeling thick in his mouth. He wanted to talk about the smell of the cellar, damp earth and fear. About the look in the weaver's eyes when he'd taken the carbine.
"It was a delivery," Riku said, his voice flat. He racked his armor on the charging station. The clack echoed in the quiet. "Objective complete."
Kaito's jaw tightened. "That's all?"
Riku finally turned, his eyes like chips of slate. "What else was it? We handed out guns and ran. That's the job." He walked out, leaving Kaito alone with the humming machines and the stale smell of rain.
Kaito pulled his hands from his pockets and looked at them. They didn't feel like his own.
In the command center, the cold air smelled of ozone and overworked processors. Haruto was still in his pilot suit, hunched over a console as data streams scrolled across his vision. He was chasing a ghost—a 0.02% pressure fluctuation in the port thruster that Akari had already dismissed three times as a sensor glitch.
"Log it," Haruto muttered, magnifying the schematic. His eyes burned. If he closed them, he'd feel the lurch of the wind shear, hear the static-choked prayers of the rebels. The sharp smell of ozone suddenly took him back to the academy simulators, to the scent of a plasma breach. To Kenji's voice, raw from screaming: Emotion is a variable you can't control, Haruto. Burn it out of the equation. Kenji, who was now probably just dust and memory.
The calm, infuriating logic. Haruto wanted to smash something. Instead, he slumped in his chair, the tension draining out of him, leaving only a grinding exhaustion. He scrubbed a hand over his face, the rasp of stubble loud in the quiet room.
He looked up at the main holographic display. A web of lights representing their rebel cells. Fifty new lights flickered into existence. Fifty new chances. He had given them guns. He had given them a chance. The weight of it settled on him, cold and heavy.