Dinner With Family by Hiroyuki Morioka (best novels for teenagers TXT) 📕

deceived. I do not plan to raise an objection to it; it was a combat simulation, after all. There were, however, some particular details I found unsatisfactory. Please allow me to bring them up during the meeting.”

Atosryua frowned. What was Roiryua talking about?

The Commanders’ Meeting is going to be a thorny tangle, she thought, grinning hollowly. There were quite a few things she wanted to tell him, too.

As she read through Roiryua’s report, Atosryua realized at last what he’d misunderstood.

Just then, a call request came from the Count of Hyde.

“I apologize, I know you’re busy,” said Jint.

“It’s okay. I myself was trying to get in touch with you,” she replied.

“Thank you for going through that trouble for me.”

“No, it’s quite all right, Your Excellency. It’s a breather for my own sake. I think I know why you’d want to call, too. You’re worried the Red Team attacked your star fief, isn’t that right?”

“Exactly, ma’am. So I —” Jint had been about to talk a mile a minute, but Atosryua put up a hand.

“You have nothing to worry about,” she said. “A small amount of damage may have been dealt, but I don’t think it’s anything serious.”

“A small amount of damage!?” He wasn’t consoled by this at all. He knew in his bones how big a gap there was in the way some things were perceived by the Abh and by Landers. He had no idea what the bar for “serious” was for an Abh. For all he knew, that area of the planet was in a wretched state. “May I ask you to fill me in?”

“You’d best talk to Hecto-Commander Roiryua about it. It looks as though he’ll be raising an objection about the incident.”

“An objection? What about?”

“The Hecto-Commander has gotten the wrong idea. Just talk to him. If you could clear up the misunderstanding for me, that would spare me some trouble.”

“Understood.” The haze of uncertainty hadn’t gone from his heart, but he nodded.

He asked Sobash to call the Sircaubh, the ship Roiryua was on. Sobash nodded, and after giving the Communications Officer the order, he whispered into Jint’s ear: “I checked on your home city.”

“You did a ground scan for me?”

“I did. It’s not that labor-intensive to do so.” Sobash pulled up a hologram of Martinh at the center of the bridge. “This is the town of your birth, correct? We couldn’t ascertain the exact extent of the damage, not from orbit.”

Crandon City looked exactly like what he remembered. For the time being, he was relieved.

Roiryua appeared on the main screen. After getting the usual first-meeting pleasantries quickly over with, Jint brought up the burning question.

Roiryua looked puzzled. “I did indeed attack the landworld. I just fail to grasp why it is Your Excellency is interested.”

“Because I’m the world’s Lord,” said Jint. “Of course I’d be interested if my landworld got attacked.”

“But as far as I understand it, Lonh, you weren’t a participant in the exercise.”

“No, you’re right, I wasn’t a participant. I’m asking you as the Count of Hyde.” Talk about off-track, thought Jint.

“Ohh. How careless of me. Of course this would be relevant to you, Lonh-Dreur.”

“Yes. ‘Of course’ is right.”

“So Your Excellency participated in the conspiracy, correct?”

Roiryua was clearly half-joking, so he didn’t seem to be criticizing Jint. But why was he supposed to be accused of any such thing to begin with?

“I don’t understand. What’s this about a conspiracy...?” he asked, well and truly confused.

“Am I mistaken? Are you saying Your Excellency had nothing to do with the attack we received?”

“Hecto-Commander, I’m sorry, but are you unaware that the landworld doesn’t actually belong to the Empire yet?”

“Yes, that is what I heard,” Roiryua nodded. “To have set up this ‘Hyde Countdom in rebellion’ scenario and made it seem so true to life, that in itself is to be lauded. We were completely fooled, but it’s not unusual for information in the zone of war to be conflicting, so I’m of the opinion that that made the exercise all the more true to life. I’m just displeased that the weapons didn’t meet the standards of a Star Forces exercise. In addition, it’s a disciplinary offense, and decidedly unfair, that the weapons didn’t cease functioning after getting hit with a mock-attack from our end. I plan to lodge an objection on this point, and if it comes to it, I’m prepared to take the case to our higher-ups.”

“I honestly have no clue what you’re talking about, sir,” said Jint, more bewildered than ever.

“I’m talking about the mock-attack we received from the landworld’s surface, naturally. I do think it was quite a novel element for a training exercise...”

Jint finally realized Roiryua’s misinterpretation. He was under the impression the Forr Da Antohbeeta, the pride of the Martinese people and the administration of the Hyde Star System, were merely mock-weapons for use in warship training.

“So you don’t believe it to have been an actual attack, sir?”

“An actual attack?” Roiryua raised an eyebrow. “That?”

“You may find it hard to believe, but that was an attack against the Star Forces,” said Jint, miffed.

Roiryua really didn’t believe it at first, but Jint exhausted every means to explain it to him, eventually getting him to accept that it was, in fact, an attack meant to do harm (though he still looked somewhat dubious).

“If I may, Hecto-Commander, what sort of strike did you launch against the landworld?”

“We shot mock shells at first. They burned up in the atmosphere, of course, but even so, the attack should have registered as hitting the target. Yet the surface kept firing. Which I suppose makes sense if they truly thought they were doing battle. We could have ignored it, but they did have some punch for mock-weapons, and there was a possibility it would hinder the conveyance ship, so I chose to forcibly remove it for the sake of continuing the exercise as normal. That is to say, we issued an evacuation advisory, and then made use of the EM cannons.”

“Did you shoot nuclear fusion shells!?”

“No, we wouldn’t go