Branch 44 was bigger than he thought. It sat on a proper harbour with a stone fort wall and three warships docked and a flag that actually flew straight because someone had bothered to maintain the pole. He stood on the deck of his ship as they came in and looked at it and thought it seemed like the kind of base that ran properly, which was either a good sign or meant the corruption was better hidden.
The numbers told him fairly quickly which one it was.
He scanned the dock crew as the ship came in. Standard range — greens in the low thousands, reds modest, nothing that made him pause. A harbour master with an impressive green. A young Ensign with an embarrassingly high red for someone who looked about nineteen, which was almost impressive in its own way. Light filed them and walked down the gangplank.
Haas was quiet behind him. He'd been quiet since yesterday.
⬛ ⬛ ⬛
Commodore Vesh ran Station 4 out of a large office on the fort's second floor with a view of the harbour and a desk that was slightly too big for the room, the way powerful men's desks sometimes were. He was in his fifties, grey at the temples, with the build of someone who had been genuinely fit twenty years ago and hadn't quite let it go entirely. He stood when Light entered, extended a hand, and smiled with real warmth.
[ Vesh, Commodore — Station 4 Commander ]
[ Green: 2,100 / Red: 47,300 ]
Light shook the hand and sat down across from him and noted that 47,300 was higher than anything he'd seen since he arrived in this world. Higher than Bors. Higher than any of the thirty-one men on the deck yesterday. He kept his face pleasant and his posture slightly forward, the body language of a junior officer who was glad to be somewhere with proper facilities.
"Captain Yagami." Vesh settled back into his chair. "The Iron Jaw Pirates. That was fast work. Your report said all hands killed during boarding — the whole crew?"
"Yes sir." Light rubbed the back of his neck. "Honestly I wasn't sure how it would go. First major engagement as Captain — I was more nervous than I'd like to admit. Bors was stronger than the poster suggested. Hit me into the mast at one point." He laughed a little. "I think I'm still feeling that."
Vesh smiled. "First boarding's always like that. The bounty posters never capture how someone actually fights. You came out clean though — that's what matters." He leaned forward. "The full crew, though. That's unusual."
"It got messy during boarding." Light spread his hands. "Some surrendered and then one of them went for a weapon again — it just escalated. My Lieutenant can confirm the report."
Haas, standing behind him, said nothing. Light didn't look back.
Vesh studied him for a moment, then nodded. Whatever he was weighing, Light apparently passed it. "Right. Well. The South Blue's better off without them either way." He reached for a file. "Station 7 has three active bounty targets in its patrol range right now — I'll want weekly reports on your progress. Anything you need from us, supplies or personnel, put in a formal request and I'll see what I can do."
"Thank you, sir. There was one thing — my crew's Seastone restraint supply is low. The last Captain apparently didn't requisition for eight months." Light shook his head with the mild exasperation of a man inheriting someone else's disorganisation. "I've been making do but it's not ideal."
"I'll have it sorted today." Vesh made a note. "Anything else?"
"Not for now." Light stood, straightened his coat. "I appreciate you seeing me. It's good to know Branch 44 is in your capable hands sir. "
Light shook the hand again and smiled and thanked him again and left.
⬛ ⬛ ⬛
He spent the afternoon at Station 4. Collected the Seastone supplies, walked the dock, ate a meal in the officers' mess that was considerably better than Station 7's, and had a long and genuinely enjoyable conversation with a Lieutenant Commander named Paras about patrol route optimisation in the South Blue's eastern channels, which Paras had apparently been thinking about for years and had never found a superior willing to discuss it.
[ Paras, Lieutenant Commander ]
[ Green: 9,400 / Red: 620 ]
Light listened carefully and asked real questions and suggested two adjustments that Paras immediately recognised as improvements, and the Lieutenant Commander left the conversation looking like he'd had the best afternoon in months. Light watched him go and thought that 9,400 green was a waste in a posting like this, and made a note to recommend him for something better the next time he filed a report.
He requested overnight quarters. Vesh approved it without hesitation.
He went to his room at ten, read for an hour, and lay in the dark looking at the ceiling until the base had gone fully quiet.
⬛ ⬛ ⬛
Vesh's quarters were at the end of the senior officer corridor, third door on the right. Light had noted this on the way to his own room. He stood outside it at half past one in the morning in his socks, dagger in his right hand, and listened until he was certain of the breathing pattern on the other side.
Asleep. Deeply.
The door wasn't locked — why would it be, inside a Marine fort with guards at every entrance. Light opened it slowly, crossed the room in the dark without needing to see, and put the dagger into the side of Vesh's neck in one clean motion.
Or that was the idea.
Vesh's eyes opened the instant the blade touched skin. Not woke — was already awake, or woke in the same instant, it didn't matter, and the Tekkai activated so fast that Light felt the resistance before the dagger had gone a quarter of an inch. The blade stopped dead, wedged shallowly against a neck that had gone harder than wood, and Vesh grabbed Light's wrist with both hands and there were three seconds of genuine struggle before Light used Force Authority to push the man's grip away and stepped back.
They looked at each other in the dark.
Vesh was upright in his bed, one hand going instinctively to the dagger that was still sticking out of his neck at a shallow angle — barely in, not deep enough to do anything on its own. His face had gone through several expressions very quickly and arrived at something that wasn't quite fear but was adjacent to it. He was holding the Tekkai. Light could see the effort in him, the slight rigidity, the controlled breathing of a man who understood his situation precisely.
If he released the Tekkai, the dagger would find purchase and he would die quickly. If he held it, he couldn't move — Tekkai at that level of activation froze the muscle groups, locked the body into its hardened state. He could not lunge, could not reach his own weapon on the bedside table, could not call out without breaking the technique for the fraction of a second it would take Light to drive the blade home.
He was a Commodore with twenty years of service and he had been reduced, in about four seconds, to perfect stillness.
Light tilted his head and looked at him with what could only be described as mild delight.
"47,300," he said quietly. "That's your red. I looked at it this afternoon while you were telling me about Reyes." He pulled up the system panel — habit now, he looked at it the way other men might check a watch. "The pirate I killed yesterday had 24,800. You have almost double that sitting above your head and you're wearing a Commodore's coat and you were going to help me with my Seastone supply." He laughed once, very softly, through his nose. "Do you know what the number means? What you've done, counted up and weighed and sitting right there?"
Vesh stared at him. His eyes were doing a lot of work — processing, calculating, looking for the angle, looking for the exit. There wasn't one.
"I've decided," Light continued, in the same easy, conversational tone he'd used all afternoon, "that ten thousand is the line. Red karma above ten thousand. That's where it stops being human failure and starts being a choice made over and over again." He glanced at the panel. "You're at forty-seven. The pirate crew I killed yesterday averaged about twelve. Ordinary pirates." He looked back at Vesh. "You're doing considerably worse than ordinary pirates. In a Commodore's coat. In a fort with a straight flag."
He stepped forward and put his hand on the dagger.
Vesh made a sound — the only sound he could make without breaking Tekkai, a low pressurised exhale through his nose — and his eyes said everything his body couldn't. Why. Why are you doing this. Who are you. What is wrong with you.
Light considered the question behind the eyes, the genuine bewildered terror of a man who had run this base for a decade and had never once imagined it ending like this, in the dark, at the hands of someone who'd eaten dinner in his mess and complimented his harbour.
"I know," Light said, almost kindly. "Bad luck."
He pushed the dagger in the rest of the way.
Vesh held the Tekkai for another two seconds — pure reflex, the body refusing to accept what had happened — and then it released, and he went still, and Light stood in the quiet room and listened to the fort breathe around him.
Nothing. No alarm. No footsteps.
He looked at the panel.
[ KARMA SYSTEM ]
[ KP: 43,960 ]
[ LIFE FORCE Lv.1 — Next: 20,000 KP ]
[ WEAPON ARTS Lv.1 — Next: 10,000 KP ]
[ OBSERVATION Lv.0 — Next: 500,000 KP ]
[ ARMAMENT Lv.0 — Next: 500,000 KP ]
[ CONQUEROR'S Lv.0 — Next: 1,000,000 KP ]
[ SORU Lv.1 — Next: 50,000 KP ]
[ TEKKAI Lv.1 — Next: 50,000 KP ]
[ GEPPO Lv.0 — Next: 10,000 KP ]
[ KAMI-E Lv.0 — Next: 10,000 KP ]
[ RANKYAKU Lv.0 — Next: 10,000 KP ]
[ SHIGAN Lv.0 — Next: 10,000 KP ]
[ LIFE RETURN Lv.0 — Next: 20,000 KP ]
[ FORCE AUTHORITY Max Output ]
4,730 from Vesh. A tenth of 47,300 — 43,960 total now, combining yesterday's remainder. He decided to spend points in the morning, not doing it at the scene. He arranged Vesh in a way that was consistent with a man who had died in his sleep of an assassination. He already knew that for a man with Red Karma higher than a pirate, some investigation will inevitably reveal his dirty deeds, whatever they may be. He had no interest in knowing.
And they'll search for the culprit among his victims.
Nothing to do with him. He'd never met the man before.
He pulled the dagger out carefully. Wiped it. Put it away.
He went back to his room and washed his hands and lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling again, and this time he was smiling and couldn't quite stop, which was fine because no one was there to see it.
Ten thousand. He'd decided it in the afternoon and he was certain of it now. A clean, round number. Everyone above it, without exception. Marines, pirates, nobles, merchants, it didn't matter the coat or the title — the number was the number and the number didn't lie.
The South Blue was going to take a while.
He was looking forward to it.