Free Web Novel"What did you just say?"
she asked.
Her voice was very soft.
As if confirming something of little importance.
Dmitri's lips were trembling.
"I... I didn't..."
"You spoke of my family."
It wasn't a question.
"You said our surname is cursed."
Dmitri's eyes were wide.
His pupils had shrunk to the size of pinheads.
He could see the rifling inside the muzzle, and the knuckles of the finger on the trigger turning slightly white.
"You said my sister would also die in the mud like a dog."
As the last word fell, the temperature in the corridor seemed to drop several degrees.
The four Blue-Hats all felt it.
The lead officer's Adam's apple bobbed once, but he did not speak, did not move, and did not even shift his gaze from straight ahead.
Dmitri opened his mouth.
He wanted to say something.
Perhaps beg for mercy.
Perhaps explain.
Perhaps bring up his titles and position once more, trying to find one last straw to clutch at within this power structure that no longer existed.
But he didn't have time to say anything.
Because she pulled the trigger.
The gunshot exploded in the corridor.
In this enclosed space, the sound was reflected, layered, and amplified by the walls, as if someone had struck a brass gong right next to the ear.
The flames of the gas lamps tilted to one side simultaneously; one went out directly.
The smell of gunpowder smoke instantly filled the entire corridor.
Dmitri Andreyevich Volkov's body fell backward.
The two Blue-Hats let go.
There was no longer any need to hold him up.
The body fell to the floor, the back of the head hitting the concrete with a dull thud.
Then, it was quiet.
Only the sound of rain remained in the corridor.
And the smell of gunpowder smoke slowly dissipating. frёeωebɳovel.com
She lowered the gun.
Muzzle down, her arm hung naturally at her side.
She looked at the corpse on the ground.
She watched for three seconds.
Then she handed the gun back to the Blue-Hat beside her.
The Blue-Hat took the gun, checked the chamber, slid it back into the holster, and fastened the buckle.
Not a single superfluous word was spoken throughout. freewebnovel.cσ๓
She turned to the lead officer.
"Dmitri Andreyevich Volkov, member of the Usar United Military Science Committee, Lieutenant General of the Army."
Her voice regained its previous calm.
"Between the imperial years 399 and 403, utilizing his position, he sold military secrets to the Victoria Royal Research Institute, including but not limited to the design blueprints for the second-generation Spinal Probe technology, the troop deployment maps of the Western Defense Line, and all details of the Soul-Eater Sword 'capture' plan."
"The amount involved is 1.12 million. This directly led to over four thousand casualties on our side during the winter raid on the Western Defense Line in imperial year 401."
"Charge: Treason."
She paused.
"Complete evidentiary documents are on the table."
The lead officer nodded.
"How should the report be written?" he asked.
His voice was steady, devoid of any unnecessary emotion.
"Just write that Dmitri was lawfully arrested for treason."
"During the arrest, the prisoner became agitated, took advantage of the guard's inattention to seize a sidearm, and committed suicide out of fear of his crimes."
she said.
"Resuscitation failed."
"Died on the spot."
The lead officer nodded again.
"Understood."
He made a gesture to the three ◆ Nоvеlіgһt ◆ (Only on Nоvеlіgһt) people behind him.
Two bent down—one lifting the shoulders, the other the legs—and picked up the corpse from the ground.
The third person pulled a piece of dark gray cloth from his coat pocket and spread it on the floor, covering the things that had splattered out.
Their movements were practiced.
Their coordination was seamless.
As if they had done this many times before.
The sound of footsteps receded down the corridor.
The door at the end closed.
She stood alone in the corridor.
The gas lamps returned to their normal brightness, and the one that had gone out was relit by the airflow from the end of the corridor.
The light was a dim yellow, casting a long, thin shadow at her feet.
The piece of dark gray cloth on the floor had been taken away.
But she still looked down at that spot.
Nothing was left.
It was clean.
As if nothing had ever happened.
She turned and walked back into the room.
The military greatcoat was still piled on the chair. She didn't go to pick it up.
She walked to the window.
The rain was still falling, but it was lighter than before. The wind was still strong, blowing the branches of the old elm tree outside the window into a mess.
On the distant horizon, lightning spread horizontally through the clouds like a glowing crack.
She waited.
Thunder rolled in, then rolled away.
The curtain of rain turned into a white wall in the next flash of lightning.
This bolt of lightning was brighter than all the ones before it.
The white light split the entire world in two—heaven and earth, black and white, storm and silence.
In that white light, the scene outside the window was illuminated completely and without reservation.
It was parked right there.
In the open space about three hundred meters from the building, a colossus lay quietly, like a sleeping steel behemoth.
The hull was over one hundred and twenty meters long and nearly forty meters wide. The dark gray armored shell was densely covered with rivets, each the size of a fist.
Six massive cantilever arms extended from each side of the hull, at the ends of which were spiral thrusters over ten meters in diameter, their blades reflecting the cold metallic light in the rain.
Atop the hull, four oval buoyancy chambers were arranged along the central axis; the pressure gauges on the chamber walls flashed in the lightning.
The bow was a slanted wedge of armor, and beneath the armor, the barrels of two parallel main guns were visible. The muzzles were covered with waterproof canvas, but the outlines beneath the canvas were clearly discernible—the caliber was at least three times that of a standard Army steam cannon.
It was not yet finished.
Several armor plates on the midsection of the hull had not yet been installed, revealing the dense network of pipes, cables, and support frames inside, like the dissected thoracic cavity of a giant beast.
Scaffolding reached from the ground all the way to the top of the hull. Workers were running back and forth in the rain, carrying parts, welding pipes, and calibrating instruments.
The sparks from welding torches bloomed in the curtain of rain like fleeting orange flowers.
Steam surged from the exhaust ports at the bottom of the hull, scattered by the wind and merging with the rain and mist.
The lightning vanished.
Darkness swallowed everything again.
But that outline was still imprinted on the retina—huge, impossible to ignore, like a promise about to be fulfilled.
She leaned against the window frame, her long silver hair falling over her shoulders, the brim of her military cap just a blurred arc in the darkness.
She wasn't looking at the warship.
She was looking at the sky above the warship.
That torn, churning, pitch-black sky of the storm.
The afterglow of distant lightning flickered in her gray-blue eyes.
