Vol 2 Chapter 1.2 (1/2)

”So, uh… About this situation...”

In my hand was a single key taken from the hotel's reception, and I fell deep in thought.

There were three women and one man. And there was only a single key. How should I have understood the situation?

Shamefully, I was reminded of the tirade given by the mob leader. There were more women than men on Federation-controlled planets. ...What has the world become during my hundred and twenty years of cold sleep? If it's the world that had gone crazy and not me, why did Admiral Luise stay silent like the others? She was sleeping for the same time that I was!

While the elevator made its way up, I stood still like a statue, with only my eyes moving around to evaluate the developing plot.

The girls looked down from our mishap with the protesters; they were blankly staring at the cityscape outside of the elevator. It didn't appear to be a good time to ask about my problem. Not that it would ever be appropriate, anyway.

--Thump... Thump... Thump...

I felt Dawnbringer's-- ...Er, my furious heartbeat.

Huff... Huff... I became extremely nervous. As the elevator went further up, my heart hammered my chest even harder. It was the slowest elevator that I'd ever seen! My heart was going to explode at this rate!

And then the elevator finally stopped.

--Creak.

My blood ran cold as the elevator doors opened. W-was that the right thing to do? Lezirth Dawnbringer, was that the right path for him? A hundred and twenty years after, did the world's sense of morality and justice finally deteriorate like this?

But if the world around me had really changed, then that could only be a step forward, not a step back! Is it not natural for a living being to adapt to the changes in the surrounding world? Yeah, that's all there is to it!

A million thoughts crashed into each other as I took a step into the hallway.

Our belongings were already brought up to our room. A bellboy opened the entrance, and Ensign Meihowa gave him a tip.

It was difficult to face the bellboy. What kind of a man was I in his eyes? The protesters undoubtedly saw me as an awful person, and it was possible that he saw me the same way.

I carefully walked into the room. Hm... The hotel was shaped like a capital 'E', so the scene outside the window was mostly this building's walls. Since the view was terrible, it was clear that the room wasn't this hotel's best. Oh well, though; it was a perfect fit for an Ensign, Sergeant, and two Apprentices.

In the room were two large beds. Was this meant for a single family?

”You take this one, Lezirth. Us three will take the other one.” Ensign Meihowa directed me to the window-side bed. She walked over to the wall behind the beds and pulled something down. It was a room divider, which was then unfolded to separate the two beds.

Oh, so I guess now we virtually had our own rooms? Ps.h.!.+ I knew it was too early to get excited.

N-no wait, I was never excited!

...I knew it was too early to get embarra.s.sed. I-I mean, worried! Too early to be worried!

Sob, sob... I'm sorry, I just made up a lie that I wouldn't believe in myself. I actually looked forward to it happening. Yes, I'm a guy, too.

Family rooms had two shower rooms and washrooms, so Ensign Meihowa and Sergeant Aroha went to shower first. Meanwhile, Admiral Luise connected her portable computer's displays to a large projector in the room and began searching for something.

Soon, the mob leader’s ratty face showed up on the screen. Head of Autonomous Planet Ma.n.u.s Solidum, William Mayer-- fading blonde hair receding from his crown, amazingly thick gla.s.ses. He was the very image of an eccentric, old professor. He was in his early thirties-- Wait, with that face?! I thought he would be fifty, minimum!

“Is this the punk?!”

It had been quite a long time since the last time Admiral Luise said the word ‘punk’. It was important to note that Admiral Luise would never say such words when calm. Know your enemy, she spoke to herself, as she browsed around to find the main website of Ma.n.u.s Solidum.

----Dah-danana, dananana…..

...Star *ars opening theme?! A very familiar music played, along with a wordy narration scrolling down on screen. The gist of it was similar to the announcement posted back at the airport lounge’s bulletin board. The Federation is oppressing them, they said. The men of autonomous planets must band together, they said. And then they somehow came to the idiotic conclusion that they must oppress female Replicants and Elcro, Asa hybrids.

The sadder part of the story was that there was a sizable support for their movement. They even pressured the Federation’s government by threatening to join the Alliance should they not listen to their demands. Scary people.

What kind of thought process would lead them to think that it’s a good idea to try and ally with a faction composed primarily of Elcro, Asa, and Replicants? As a group that publicly denounced them? Did they all install warp engines in their heads? How else could their train of thought take such an intergalactic leap?

“Wait, now that I think about it, weren’t they filming us? What if that gets on television?”

Admiral Luise replied to me as she opened a command console, grinning. “I deleted it before it got broadcasted.”

Television networks used inter-warp communication networks too, but they were likely using low-security civilian channels instead of military-grade ones. Still, she managed to hack their system in such a short time? I stared at Admiral Luise, now with a fearful look. “Ah… y-yeah, that’s a relief.”

Right, something like that has always been trivial for Admiral Luise.

Soon, Meihowa and Aroha exited the shower room. Admiral Luise and I separately showered later, and… wore the same clothes again, apart from our underwear, since we didn’t have anything else to wear. Ugh. I really needed to buy more. Even the clean underwear was military-issued, so… it was quite depressing. Not that the quality was any problem-- the designs consisted of bland patterns of grey, or jungle camo.

“Then we’ll go buy clothes for the two of you, then eat. Let’s go down.”

“Yep. That eight-thousand-credit-buffet that I mentioned turned out to be in this hotel, too. Let’s eat down there first.”

Meihowa, Aroha, Luise and I all had the same plan.

After waking up from hibernation, the only things that touched my mouth were military rations, emergency foods, and energy gels. Maybe that was the reason -- the cheap, eight thousand credits’ worth of food tasted so, so good. I was mildly annoyed that we had to eat among the busy noise of a dozen slot machines, but it was bearable. I was too satisfied with the food to complain.

“Tasty, but a little salty.” said Admiral Luise, looking just as happy.

Ensign Meihowa soon brought drinks to our table. “Wow… they have nothing but alcohol to drink.”

What a blatant trick. Salty food encourages drinking, and all drinks are alcoholic. Was it safe to understand that as them saying ‘Get drunk and spend all of your money here~!’? That was the only reason why they had food and drinks at such a cheap price, huh? Who did they expect to fool with such obvious intentions?

“Don’t drink too much, alright?” I advised the group as I received a pint of beer from Ensign Meihowa. Sergeant Aroha took a rimmed gla.s.s margarita, Ensign Meihowa took a lime garnished fruit punch c.o.c.ktail, and Admiral Luise took a gla.s.s of pineapple punch.

We’ve had some depressing moments on our first day, but the memory quickly faded away after a swig from my pint. The three girls also looked pleasantly surprised at the taste of their drinks after a sip each. I quickly downed the beer, thirsty from having salty food.

They were free, sure, but was it really fine, drinking so heavily when we already knew that this was a trap?

But when I saw the happy smiles on everyone’s faces, I couldn’t help but smile myself. They were beautiful normally, but smiling made them even prettier.

And soon, one empty gla.s.s became two, then three, then four, and finally Ensign Meihowa began looking in her wallet. “Alrighty~ then… ju~st a little. Let’s just play one ve~ry quickly, okay?” She slurred, and slowly staggered away.

Sergeant Aroha tried to stop her, but she was equally out of it. “Meihowa, n-no, don’t do it… twenty thousand per day~ over twenty thousand! Twenty thousand! No more than thaaat, okay?”

“Of-of course. We gotta play around an entire month… Hic-... ohh, my…” She covered her mouth in surprise. She was pretty cute then, the way she embarra.s.sedly looked at me with rosy cheeks-- but she was going to get rosier if I kept looking at her. I pretended to not notice her and looked away, and she continued, “We-we can’t waste an entire month while we spend nothing at all! Yeah! Twenty thousand per day! Let’s do it.”

“Mmh, let me play for a short while, then.” Admiral Luise also stood up. Agh, that just made me want to play too!

There were holographic numbers displayed at the top of each slot machine. Okay… That’s the jackpot? Let’s see… The ten-credit slot machine had a payout of eight hundred million credits. Wow, we could spend the most luxurious vacation ever if we could get that money! The other machines were equally shocking; their prizes grew to numbers that Apprentices could never hope to see in their lifetime.

Jackpots are called that because they usually don’t happen, of course, but what was stopping me from getting it today? I remembered that I joked to Ensign Meihowa that I’d buy her that expensive toy if I won a jackpot… Should I buy that for her? Well, if I had that kind of money, a mere toy would mean nothing.

I started by turning twenty thousand credits into a stack of chips.

“Lezirth is playing too?” asked Sergeant Aroha, already holding a set of chips.

I shrugged. “I’m only going to spend twenty thousand credits.”

“Fufu. Don’t forget about me when you win the jackpot, okay? Ah, how about marrying right here if you do? I hear marrying here can take less than an hour.”

“Psh. Don’t you be the one to forget me, Sergeant.” I stuck my tongue out as a retort to her silly remark, and submerged myself into the sea of slot machines.

Hmm… what now? The cheapest slot machines to start, I guess? I started by playing with the ten-credit slot machines.

…

Th-that was lucky! I was maybe playing for ten minutes tops, and my starting twenty thousand credits bloated up to twenty four thousand. I earned four thousand! I used a ten-credit machine to earn four thousand, so I would have earned four hundred thousand at a thousand credit machine! And the ten thousand one would have given me four million! Ugh, what a waste!

And the jackpot for that machine? Twenty giga credits! Twenty billion! B-but wait, wouldn’t my starting funds run out in seconds if things don’t go too well? Then, I should move up to thousand first..

…

Soon, I got away from the machine with none of my starting chips.

That was to be expected. I may have underestimated the casino.

Well, what about the others?

I walked around the casino and quickly found Ensign Meihowa. She seemed to have lost all of her funds like I did; she was staring at the hologram television installed in the middle of the casino, taking sips from her c.o.c.ktail. Some men tried to get close to her and flirt with her, but she refused to give them any attention.

When I approached her, she drunkenly giggled after noticing me. “Ah, it’s Lezirth. Heeh heh heh.”

Yep, she was drunk. She acted very differently than usual. The men around her got up and left angrily when they saw her smiling at me.

“What are you doing here? Did yours go well at all?”

“Uhhm, no… I losht it all, heh…”

“............”

She mumbled with a drunken slur and pretended to hit her head with her fist. If she were to gesture like that out of context, I might have mocked her for trying too hard to be cute, but she was drunk at the moment… and cute.

“I lost everything too. It doesn’t take too long to lose twenty thousand, huh.”

Ensign Meihowa laughed in a silly ah-ha-ha and gently patted my back. “Me too, me too… but that’s okay! Let’s just say that was payment for the buffet and the drinks! Considering how much we ate and drink, this is a fine trade.”

Truthfully, if we were to eat and drink that much, we would have easily lost a couple hundred thousand credits. With that thought, I felt that we did indeed get our money’s worth.

“Right? Hey, this is pretty tasty.”

“Don’t drink too much. What about the others?”

I looked toward my side.

Hmm?

Sergeant Aroha sat crooked with a gloomy face, pulling on the lever of a slot machine. In front of her was a huge mound of empty margarita gla.s.ses. Most importantly, that slot machine was the ten thousand credits one!

“Whoa?!”

Meihowa and I immediately broke out of our drunken stupor. We ran behind Aroha and pulled her away. “What are you doing, Aroha?!”

“Ah… Meihowa, Lez-...irth…”

Aroha had the most depressing expression.

...Wait, seriously? She was kidding, right?!

“...How much did you spend?”

“About three million credits, maybe?”

“....”

Colours drained from our faces.

She hadn’t spent our entire vacation fund yet, but all that on the first day?! We were supposed to use it for at least a month! Still, I had to keep calm and feel sorry for Aroha. The victim is always the most distressed one in a tragedy, after all.

“Th-that’s alright. We’ll sc.r.a.pe together whatever we have left for you, so let’s stop here.”

“Mmh, okay…”

Aroha’s usual grin was nowhere to found. She looked more like an empty husk of her former self. Whew… what a scary place, this casino! I should have known that this place was a source of all evils!

“Wait a minute! Where’s Luise?!”

“Oh-oh no! I can’t find her!”

I left Aroha with Meihowa and began looking around for Admiral Luise. But only an endless line of slot machines came into my sight. She had no ordinary appearance, so I should have been able to notice her right away. Maybe she was kidnapped? Mugged? Even though the casino had psionic suppressors, Admiral Luise could beat an ordinary human being without any effort. But what if there really was a secret organization that’s trying to remove us, and now they’ve come to kidnap her?!

Suddenly, a loud cheer came from somewhere and stopped my panic attack.

Huh, what was that? I turned around, and there was a huge crowd surrounding a card table.

“Excuse me.”

I dug through the crowd. On the other side and behind the card table was a short-haired girl, sitting on a gigantic pile of chips.

“Oh--!”

Seeing her, I became frightened. Could she have used her psionic powers to cheat her game? Admiral Luise was powerful enough to bypa.s.s the effect of psionic suppressors, but that could not stop her from getting detected. And the casino’s network should be mostly localized, so it wasn’t likely that she was able to hack their system.

“Uh-...” Meihowa and Aroha caught up to me and joined my surprise. Admiral Luise kept herself busy by stacking her chips into towers, and winked at us when we approached her.

“What is it, Sergeant Aroha? Why the long face?”

“Oh, about that…”

When I explained our situation to her, she grabbed a tower of cookies-and-cream-coloured chips and spread them on a chip counting panel. She then shoved it towards Aroha. “Get those cashed in. After you make up for Aroha’s losses, you three can split them equally.”

Aroha took a single chip from the pile with shaky hands and brought it closer to me. The chip’s label read ‘100K’.

...Uh, so, each chip is a hundred thousand credits? At a glance, I counted about a hundred chips, so there was at least ten million.

Aroha and Meihowa s.h.i.+vered all the way to the casino cas.h.i.+er.

We weren’t all going to get arrested right there, right? There won’t be a certain sergeant and an ensign getting arrested today, right? And we won’t be sent away along with them?

A bunch of horrifying thoughts crossed my mind, but Aroha and Meihowa soon returned safely, smiling their happiest smiles yet, hopping back to us in joy. If they haven’t gone insane after losing all of their chips for cheating, they were probably happy about cas.h.i.+ng in all of those chips.

“Hmm… alright, how about a little break? I should go shopping for new clothes. Fufu.” Admiral Luise acted like she was the queen of the world, stretching her arms like she had done nothing. That was okay; for that moment, she really was the queen of the world. When the crowd around her cheered in awe, she grabbed a handful of hundred credit chips and threw them in the air. The crowd cheered even louder and piled around the flying chips.

Hundred credits. I imagined it would just be a ha.s.sle to bother picking them up, but I had forgotten that there was a big difference between the Federation planets’ economy and theirs. A hundred may have meant a lot more to them than us.

She looked like a real, professional gambler. A pair of sungla.s.ses and a huge lit cigar in her mouth and the scene was perfect. While the onlookers busily mobbed around the fallen chips, I sc.r.a.ped the chips off of the table in front of Luise. Seriously, how much was that?

“Maybe I should give up being a soldier and become a professional gambler!” Admiral Luise contemplated, and… that really did sound like a great idea.

Cas.h.i.+ng in every chip totalled to about twenty million credits. That was after making up for Aroha’s losses. An apprentice’s weekly pay before tax deduction was about four hundred thousand credits, so there was no further explanation needed.

She earned that in less than an hour! And she hadn’t used her powers to cheat. She combined math, bluffing, and mind games together for a flawless victory of her wits.

The cas.h.i.+er smiled brightly and asked if she wanted to store the money in the casino’s vault. Admiral Luise shook her head. Once the money got transferred over to her account, she held the tips of her skirt and curtseyed, and returned to us.

It was difficult to look directly at her.

“Fufufu. Praise your new queen!” Admiral Luise grinned. Her boastful att.i.tude did not fit her childlike visage too well, but for that moment, a strong desire to praise and serve welled up from within.

“Oh, praised be the great Admiral Luise Maynard!”

“We are not worthy! Grovel, grovel!”

“Grovel, grovel MK-II.”

We praised her together. Sergeant Aroha, especially, talked like she was conversing with the living form of Ksitigarbha. That was understandable, considering how she was sent to the afterlife and then back.

“Ahem, Lezirth~! My shoulders feel stiff from lifting those playing cards! Ma.s.sage them immediately!”

“Yes, my lady!” I immediately jumped up to give her a ma.s.sage, but her smooth shoulders and her beautiful neck distracted me.

It was difficult to look directly at her.

Kiss kiss, sigh sigh, were all I could think when I looked at her neck. No, wait! I will never succ.u.mb to such dirty thoughts! Instead, I will think of huff huff, slap slap…? Okay, no, that’s much worse than before. I should stick with my previous plan. ...Wait, what was I thinking about? It was going to get extremely awkward if I suddenly didn’t give her a ma.s.sage!

I earnestly ma.s.saged her shoulders, looking away from her body. Admiral Luise giggled and continued her arrogant act, and soon stopped.

“Alright~ shall we go shopping soon? I really need something else to wear. Follow me, everyone! I had a few lucky streaks today, so I’ll celebrate it with gifts for all of you!”

Such heartwarming words! We followed her out with pure admiration radiating from our eyes. Sergeant Aroha and Ensign Meihowa looked particularly ecstatic as they pranced toward the brand name shops by the big fountain. Those shops may have thrown the two ladies into depression at one point, but they say that the sun s.h.i.+nes even on mouse holes. They were in very high spirits for once.

…But after a while, I suddenly noticed; where was Admiral Luise? I turned around to find her moving to the opposite side, a huge discount store that mostly sold cheap necessities.