Chapter 63 — The Ship That Never Looks Back

Records Should Not Be Read

Than Bao Nghiem stood in front of the search screen in the Guard commander's office, the cold blue light of the device shining on his face in the room that had long been deserted, with only the sound of the cooler running steadily behind the data storage racks. It was past midnight according to the ship's artificial lighting schedule, but he couldn't leave his desk, not because of work pressure, but because of a question that had just arisen in his mind a few hours ago, after the briefing with Ton Khac Du.

"From today, you are responsible for directly monitoring all unusual activities related to the Root Week in the area adjacent to the Root Layer and the Dome Layer." Ton Khac Du told him, his voice was sharp and did not allow counter questions. "Pay special attention to anyone with a history of accessing the Primeval Core or Founding Archives outside the scope of their normal work."

Than Bao Nghiem had obeyed, as he had always done during his twelve years of service in the Council Guard, a career he had been proud of because it gave him the feeling that he was protecting something of real value—the survival of eleven thousand two hundred people in a metal box wandering the endless void. But this new order came with a specific list, and in that list there was one name that made him stop longer than the others: Do Khe Lam, To Tuan Re's maintenance engineer, whom he had discovered accessing a restricted storage area with a navigator student many months ago, and had never fully reported on the incident.

He typed her name into the system, not to open an official investigation, just to understand for himself more about what he was being asked to do. The profile appeared, as brief as any normal Root Layer citizen profile - date of birth, Ky Dinh Floor, work assignment, nothing unusual. But when he scrolled to the family background, a small caption made him pause: father, Do Viet Khiem, died in Year of the Journey 239 in a maintenance incident; mother, Lam Vinh Chi, missing in Journey Year 228.

That number made him freeze. The Year of the Journey 228 was the year of the Night of Broken Roots, an event he only knew about through a few brief descriptions in the Guardian training materials, taught as a prime example of the consequences of allowing unrest to spread unchecked. He had never thought to look up the details, because the training materials had always made it clear that complete information about the event was classified at a level higher than the normal access of a patrol leader.

But tonight, in his new role assigned directly by the Commissioner of Internal Security, he has higher-than-normal access to a number of related files. He hesitated for a long moment, his fingers hovering over the keyboard, before typing into the search box: "Night of Broken Roots — detailed records."

The system requires identity confirmation twice before unlocking. What appeared before his eyes was not a few lines of the summary he had once learned, but a thick file, with a list of names of people arrested, interrogated, sent for "resettlement" — a cold administrative phrase he realized, upon closer reading, what it actually meant. Not a small crackdown with a few saboteurs like he had imagined. This was a large-scale operation, lasting several weeks, involving hundreds of Roots residents, many of whom were not directly related to the original protest leadership group, and were simply suspected because they lived near the area where the event occurred.

He found Lam Vinh Chi's name on the list of leaders, along with another name — Dinh Khac Bat, who was recorded as having died during the repression. But the note next to Lam Vinh Chi's name does not say "died." It read "missing, fate not confirmed," accompanied by a caption that was partially blurred, only a few words could be read: "...monitoring the possibility of survival... not prioritizing the search...political risks if made public..."

Than Bao Nghiem sat silently in front of the screen, feeling as if the floor under his feet had just tilted a small angle but enough to shift everything he had ever believed in. He spent twelve years serving a system he believed protected the survival of all, only to discover, one night by chance, that the same system had treated hundreds of innocent residents as threats to be eliminated, and was still concealing their true fate nineteen years later.

And now, he is assigned to monitor the daughter of one of those women.

He turned off the screen, stood up, walked out of the command office, wandering aimlessly through the empty corridors of the Dome Floor late at night, trying to organize the chaotic thoughts in his head. He thought about the night he discovered Khe Lam and Bach Van in the Founding Archives, their panicked looks when they were caught, and how he had let them escape, arguing to himself that he didn't have enough evidence to confirm their identities. At that time, he thought he was hesitant because of his lack of professionalism. He wondered now if part of him, even then, had sensed that something was wrong with the mission he was on.

He stopped in front of a simulated window, looking out into a simulated starry space, thinking of the oath he had taken the day he enlisted in the Guard — to protect the survival of the ship and all its inhabitants, regardless of class. He wondered if that oath still meant anything, if fulfilling it required him to continue hiding the truth about what happened to the very residents he swore to protect.

Before going to the briefing room, he turned to the Communication Hall at the border of the Root Floor, where workers changed shifts every morning, under the pretext of checking the security situation in the area as part of their assigned duties. He stood in a hidden corner, watching the stream of people wearing blue-gray maintenance uniforms passing by, their faces carrying the familiar tired look of people who had just finished or were about to start a hard shift. He recognized Do Khe Lam in the crowd, talking to an older man — probably her team leader, based on the way other workers bowed when passing him — about some technical detail related to the pressure regulator, her hands still stained with lubricating oil from the shift that had just ended.

She looked nothing like the "threat" described in Guard training materials. She looked like the thousands of other Root-layers he had seen during his twelve years of patrols—tired, dedicated, keeping the systems that kept the entire ship alive while barely being reminded of their existence by anyone in the Dome, except when something went wrong. He tried to imagine her, twenty years old, as the daughter of the woman who had stood in front of an intercom microphone nineteen years earlier, trying to tell the entire ship a truth that the generation of leaders at that time decided to suppress by force. The image did not match anything he had been trained to identify as a dangerous person.

The older man — Vu Khac Dang, according to the file he had seen last night — put a hand on Khe Lam's shoulder, saying something that made her laugh lightly, a short but genuine laugh, before the group dispersed to begin the day's work. Than Bao Nghiem stood there for a moment longer, recording in his mind not any evidence for the report, but a question he couldn't dismiss: if ordinary people like these were truly the greatest threat to the stability of the ship, then perhaps the problem wasn't with them, but with the very system that had turned their curiosity and pain of loss into something that needed to be monitored, suppressed.

A few minutes later, when the briefing began, Ton Khac Du asked him about the progress of monitoring the Tuan Re Group. Than Bao Nghiem stood at attention, his voice steady as always when reporting. "No unusual activity worthy of reporting has been detected, Commissioner. I will continue to monitor and report as there is progress."

That was the first time in twelve years of service that Than Bao Nghiem lied to his superiors on purpose, even though he didn't completely understand why he did it, he only knew that something in him, after that night of reading the file, could no longer blindly follow orders like before.

Ton Khac Du nodded, not satisfied but accepted the report, moving on to the next part of the briefing. Than Bao Nghiem stood there, maintaining the appearance of a devoted captain, while inside, a silent war had begun, between twelve years of training in absolute obedience and a new voice, small but persistent, whispering that perhaps his best mission right now was not to capture those who were searching for the truth, but to find out whether that truth was worth knowing or not.

He doesn't know what he will do with this new fluctuation. But he knew, as he walked out of the briefing room that morning, that he would never look at his work the same way again, and that, in itself, was a kind of U-turn he was never prepared to face.