Chapter 83: Prelude to Meeting the Supreme Commander

Daniel stood rigid in the doorway of the flag conference room. Even stripped of his broadsword and flanked by armed Marines, his imperial carriage did not entirely abandon him. His jaw was set like chipped granite, veins pulsing against his neck as his bloodshot eyes swept from the tactical monitors to the gray-haired naval officer at the end of the long conference table.

"He does not understand your words, Admiral," Ayanokoji said evenly, stepping into the room with his hands loose at his sides. "Allow me to translate."

"Go ahead," Donovan replied, not moving an inch. His hands rested flat on the polished table, his broad shoulders squared in standard khaki working uniform. "Tell him to sit. We don’t hold briefings with standing guests."

Ayanokoji turned to Daniel and spoke in low, clipped Solarian: "He tells you to sit down, Captain."

Daniel’s chest heaved. Instead of taking the offered leather swivel chair, the captain took two heavy strides forward, slamming both palms down onto the table. The Marines at the door instantly adjusted the cant of their carbines, but Donovan raised a single calm index finger, signaling them to hold.

"You..." Daniel snarled in Solarian, his voice shaking with venomous fury as he bored holes into Donovan’s face. "You dare sit there with such smug complacency after committing an unspeakable atrocity against the Holy Empire?!"

Ayanokoji translated in real-time, his tone devoid of the emotion bleeding from the captain: "He asks if you feel no shame for what he characterizes as an atrocity against his empire."

Donovan didn’t flinch. He didn’t even blink. "Tell him I don’t care about his holy indignation."

"The Admiral says your anger holds no weight here," Ayanokoji delivered smoothly.

"Our fleet!" Daniel roared, completely ignoring Ayanokoji’s earlier warnings about the folly of arrogance. His knuckles turned bone-white against the table. "Thousands of lives, Knights of the sacred orders, grand inquisitors, veteran sailors who served Her Divinity with honor! You butchered them from the shadows without a formal declaration of war, without honoring the rites of combat, and now you stand before me claiming moral authority?!"

He turned his furious glare onto Ayanokoji, teeth bared. "Hero Ayanokoji, you warned me of their mechanical might! You praised their weapons like a terrified peasant cowering before lightning! But what good is power when wielded by soulless murderers? An empire with such power that hides behind cowardice and wipes out an entire vanguard without a trial is nothing more than a plague of locusts!"

Donovan waited for Ayanokoji to finish translating the diatribe. When the teenager finished, the admiral merely exhaled a quiet, dry breath through his nose.

"Tell your captain something, son," Donovan said, his voice dropping into a quiet, gravelly baritone that easily cut through Daniel’s shouting. "He can scream about holy mandates all day long, but operational reality doesn’t care about his feelings. We have the drone telemetry archived. We have the visual logs of the scorched villages, the mass graves, and the chained beastkin men, women, and children stacked like cargo on that beachhead."

Donovan leaned forward, his steel-gray eyes locking onto Daniel’s furious face, offering neither confirmation nor denial of his own personal presence during the engagement.

"Your ’honorable knights’ were actively slaughtering and enslaving innocent people. They came to conquer, pillage, and burn under the banner of the Holy Empire. The forces of the United States didn’t commit an atrocity; we terminated one. If your soldiers didn’t want to drown in a burning pitch, they should have stayed on their own side of the ocean."

Ayanokoji translated the words faithfully into Solarian.

As the meaning hit him, Daniel didn’t recoil—his outrage flared even hotter. A look of sheer, disgusted bewilderment twisted his features, and he slammed his fist against the table once more.

"People?!" Daniel shouted in Solarian, glaring at Donovan as if the admiral had lost his mind. "You incinerated twelve battle galleons of Her Divinity’s faithful over beastkin?! Are you insane?! They are not people! They are soulless, subhuman beasts created without the divine spark of Goddess Viona! Taming wild mongrels and putting them in chains to till our fields is the natural holy order! You destroyed an imperial army over animals?!"

Ayanokoji translated in real-time, completely deadpan: "He does not view the beastkin as human beings. In his worldview, they are subhuman animals, and enslaving them is ordained by his religion. He is asking if you destroyed the fleet over creatures he considers livestock."

Beside him, Miyuki felt a cold knot of revulsion tighten in her stomach. Back in the imperial capital, the priests and nobles had always spoken of non-humans with polite disdain, but hearing Daniel state it so brazenly, with unrepentant entitlement, made her shudder.

Donovan didn’t blink. His expression remained utterly unreadable, the kind of hardened calm reserved for dealing with violent extremists.

"Tell him," Donovan said softly, "that in the United States, we have a very clear definition of universal human rights, and we don’t take moral advice from slave traders. His holy order died on that beach. The beastkin are under our protection now, and anyone who comes to put chains on them gets buried in the surf."

Ayanokoji delivered the translation in short, razor-sharp Solarian sentences.

Daniel’s mouth opened, a furious retort rising to his lips, but the utter coldness in Donovan’s stare strangled the words in his throat. His knees finally buckled under the weight of his fractured ribs and pure exhaustion. He slumped heavily into a chair, clutching his side, staring blankly at the polished table. The fight had completely drained out of him.

Donovan stood upright, his gaze fixed squarely on the broken imperial captain.

"Translate this to him, son," Donovan said. "Your ship is being towed. Your surviving crew is being detained under maritime law. But you, Captain Daniel, are not heading to a prison camp to rot."

Ayanokoji relayed the words in Solarian. Daniel lifted his head slightly, his bloodshot eyes filled with hollow confusion.

"You are being taken directly to United States sovereign territory in the west," Donovan continued, leaning slightly over the table. "Once we make port, you will be granted an audience with our Supreme Commander. He holds ultimate executive and military authority over all United States forces and operations in this world. You can air your grievances, cite your holy scriptures, and demand reparations directly to him."

Daniel flinched, his cracked lips parting. "Their... supreme commander? Who leads this godless iron horde? What manner of demon rules you?!"

Ayanokoji looked back toward Donovan. "He asks for the name of your leader."

"You’ll see soon enough."