Chapter 23 — The Ship That Never Looks Back

Things Not Asked

The navigation simulation chamber vibrated gently to the rhythm of the algorithm, blue light from the control panel illuminating the focused faces of six senior students, each sitting in front of their own simulation station, eyes glued to the series of coordinates passing across the screen in real time. Today's exercise is to simulate a hypothetical orbital deviation situation — the ship encounters an unusual gravitational field from an unmapped celestial body, and students must recalculate the correction course within a limited time.

Kieu Bach Van typed the numbers into the control panel, but his mind drifted away from the simulation screen, back to last night's meeting with Khe Lam, to her words that still echoed: "no one on the Council will have to consider anything when deciding my fate." He entered a wrong correction factor, causing the simulated trajectory on the screen to deviate irreversibly to an angle.

"Hypothetical collision." The synthesized machine voice announced coldly. "Student Kieu Bach Van, simulation failed."

"There it is again." A soft voice rang out from the next station, loud enough for only him to hear. Uong Khac Tram did not turn her head, her eyes were still glued to her own screen, her hands were still quickly typing the correction numbers for her exercises, so accurately that she almost didn't need to think. "This is the third time this week you've ruined the simulation because of a basic mistake that a first year wouldn't make."

"I know." Bach Van replied, trying to keep her voice calm, turning off the error screen to start the exercise again.

"You don't look like someone preparing for the final exam." Uong Khac Tram continued, her voice was somewhat sarcastic and probing, a familiar way of speaking to her since the day they met, when she still kept a wary distance from a person who was born with everything she had to win with her sweat through Ky Dinh Floor. "You look like someone preparing for something else, something that has nothing to do with navigation."

Bach Van did not answer, just focused on re-entering the numbers. Uong Khac Tram did not ask further, but her eyes, when he glanced over, remained glued to him for a few more seconds before returning to her screen - a look not of normal curiosity, but of someone who was used to observing to survive. She came from the Mua Floor, surpassing the Ky Dinh Floor by a score that no one in the Dome Floor could deny, but no one would let her forget that she didn't naturally belong here like everyone else. That vigilance had given her an unusually sharp eye for spotting when something doesn't add up in others — because for the past four years, she's always had to watch to see if others had noticed something amiss in herself.

At the end of the simulation time, the students left the room one by one. Bach Van stayed behind to collect notes, deliberately waiting until the room was almost empty before finding Ngo Dac Vuong's small office at the end of the hallway. The Chief Navigator was sitting alone, reviewing last week's orbit correction records, his glasses hanging down the bridge of his nose.

"Do you have time?" Bach Van asked, standing in the door frame.

"Come in." Ngo Dac Vuong replied without looking up. "I guess you didn't come here to ask about the gravity correction factor you just made wrong in the simulation."

Bach Van walked in, closing the door behind him, a small action but enough to make Ngo Dac Vuong finally raise his head, his eyes slightly alert.

"Sir, there has been a recent Guard investigation involving the Founding Archives area." Bach Van said, trying to keep his voice as if he were asking a normal academic question. "I'm curious, as a navigator, if that has anything to do with the maritime history class I'm studying. Specifically, the records of the ship's first course corrections."

Ngo Dac Vuong put down his pen, slowly, a gesture Bach Van had learned to recognize in him - a sign that he was considering carefully before saying anything.

"You've been studying navigation with me for three years, Bach Van." He spoke, his voice slower and more weighty than usual. "Do you remember what I taught you the first day? Not how to calculate the correction factor. I taught you a rule, one of the first and most important rules in piloting, even though it's not in any official curriculum."

Bach Van remembers. He remembered clearly, although at the time he only thought it was a harmless metaphor from an old teacher who liked philosophy.

"Don't ask about Lam Chu." Ngo Dac Vuong said, his voice lowered to almost a whisper even though there were only two people in the room. "I told you that three years ago, and you nodded as if it meant nothing, as most of the other cadets did. It was an unwritten rule passed down from Navigator to generation; none of us knew the exact full reason, only that there was a name, a star system, that was not mentioned in discussions of maritime history, even though it appeared faintly in a few ancient maps that the cadet library kept because no one was bothered. delete everything."

"Do you know why?" Bach Van asked, his heart beating faster.

"I don't know everything." Ngo Dac Vuong replied, and Bach Van believed him, because there was a genuine tiredness in that voice, the tiredness of someone who had lived all his life on the edge of a secret but was never allowed to fully step inside. "I knew just enough to know not to ask more questions, and to pass on that exact same question to my students, as the Chief Navigators before me had done. That's how a secret lasts the longest — not by locking it behind a locked door, but by making successive generations willingly refuse to open that door."

He looked straight into Bach Van's eyes, his eyes were no longer as vague as before. "But recently, I heard something. An investigation is going on, involving two young people who got into a restricted storage area. I won't ask for more details, because I don't want to know more details. But I want to tell you this, my student: if you have anything to do with it, even if you just know someone who is involved, be more careful than you have ever been in your life. I have seen what happens to people who ask too many wrong questions, wrong time. Not everyone stays where they are after that."

That last sentence hung in the air, both a warning and an indirect admission that Ngo Dac Vuong himself had also witnessed the consequences of asking the wrong question — maybe not of himself, but of someone he once knew.

"Thank you, teacher." Bach Van said, bowing his head, not daring to ask more, because Ngo Dac Vuong's answer itself was a living demonstration of the rule he had just reiterated: there were things people can only say to a certain extent, then silence, and that silence was itself an answer.

He left the office and walked out into the main hallway, where Uong Khac Tram was waiting, leaning against the wall, arms folded across her chest, as if she had been standing there for a long time.

"It's been a long time since I met Mr. Vuong." She said, her eyes studying his face, looking for something. "About the correction factor?"

"YES." Bach Van replied, trying to keep a normal expression.

Uong Khac Tram didn't believe it, that was evident in the way she looked at him for another second before walking with him down the hallway. "You know, last week I saw you in the transit area bordering the Root Layer, during your lunch break. Not once, but three times in two weeks. Navigator students have no official reason to frequent that area so often, unless there is an unofficial reason."

Bach Van felt her stomach tighten, but tried to keep her steps steady. "I have some research related to the technical history of Ring Rot. I need to observe the scene."

"Okay." Uong Khac Tram said, her voice was gentle but could not hide a bit of doubt lurking behind. "I'm not someone who likes to meddle in other people's business. But I understand better than anyone else in this class how dangerous it is to live on the boundary between two different classes, Bach Van. If you're standing on that boundary for some reason, I hope you know what you're doing."

She turned into another hallway before he could respond, leaving him standing there alone, both relieved that she didn't ask further and more worried than ever because she realized that, among the countless eyes watching her on this ship, at least one person was starting to look in the right direction, even though she couldn't see everything yet.