The Martial Unity

Of course, he himself was a genius by normal standards. He had clearly inherited the talent of his father and his grandfather, but even such an extraordinary talent paled in comparison to the civilizational deviant that was Ria.

He had needed the manifold to barely keep up with her.

And this only after she had chosen to slow down a bit rather than pursuing Sagehood immediately. She could have chosen to become a Martial Sage immediately after, of course. Seclude herself in a pod for an extended period of time as it decoded who she was and then uploaded it into her mind. She chose not to.

She wanted to escape the life that she had lived up until then at all costs. Sagehood could wait, as far as she was concerned. VMMM

The frigate shook in a familiar manner as it began to descend out of FTL travel, slowing down at an astronomical rate. Normally, such intense deceleration would have caused their bodies to be squished and crushed, but the inertial stabilization systems kicked into action, systematically decelerating every molecule in their body along with the ship to ensure that they didn’t feel a single thing.

“And we’ve arrived, Miss Falcon,” the pilot remarked with a friendly tone.

WHOOSH

The world outside the windows of the cockpit suddenly changed. No longer were they streaks of light, turning blue to red as they passed them. They found themselves staring at two red dwarf stars that revolved around each other in the distance at the center of the large star system.

Around each star was a quasi-Dyson Sphere, made from makeshift modular solar absorption units. Characteristic of SpaceFra Technologies, which had developed many products for Dyson Sphere replacement technologies.

A Dyson Sphere was the most extravagant kind of technological system in their civilization, and one of the most important. A true Dyson Sphere, like the one that covered Sol in the Solar System of Gaian Civilization, covered at least half the star’s Gaussian surface. It extracted energy generated by the star, converting it into electricity or electromagnetic technology that could then be transported or transmitted to the rest of the star’s system to sustain all of civilization.

However, for a frontier star system like Arima III, sequestering all the materials needed for a full-fledged Dyson Sphere was extremely difficult, thus leading to modularity innovations to such technologies, allowing them to be additively built over time as more and more units were added to the quasi-Dyson Sphere technology.

It was composed of cyborg technology from the tekvores, as well as biotechnology from the elves, and inorganic technology from the dwarves, making the best out of all worlds to produce an extremely efficient energy absorber.

The Dyson Sphere wasn’t the only thing that drew their eyes, of course. In the distance, one could even spot their destination planet, which the ship moved towards at ordinary speeds within the star system. FTL travel within a star system was strictly prohibited due to the extraordinarily high chances of an accident, forcing all spaceships to exit FTL before they entered a star system.

And when one beheld the sheer number of ships that passed through the star system, one understood why. Not only was the sheer density of traffic in the star system plainly visible from the radar feed in the spaceship featuring of tens of thousands of ships, mostly frigates, passing through the star system, from planet to planet, or from the various engineered structures that simply floated about.

Planets were surrounded by light fortress systems, artificial rings that revolved around the planet, containing space combat units designed for short-range engagement of hostilities. It was thinner than the defenses that existed for transit hubs deeper within the territory of human civilization, of course.

Because it was a frontier hub, Arima III was filled with countless observatories, space telescopes, and other sensory infrastructure that could help Gaian Civilization map the frontier better. It was part of the protocol for the Gaian Alliance to arm their frontiers to the teeth with sensory infrastructure. After all, space was extremely vast. There was so much empty room that it was easy for anybody to slip by and not be noticed unless one had very deliberate space sensors that swept massive ranges of the cosmos.

The scantness of Dyson sphere technologies and the lightness of planetary and stellar defense systems were quite characteristic of a frontier hub; it made her feel freer and liberated compared to the dense, technologically packed star systems deep within human civilization that were regarded as more secure.

There were so many random objects in space serving random purposes that it almost felt like a garbage dump sometimes, even if their designs were extremely elegant, sharp, and sci-fi-ey. Ria hated them. She hated any environment that made her feel civilizational or socially claustrophobic. She also felt more at ease in the frontier because there was almost no chance that anybody would recognize her. VMMM…

Vibrations passed through the frigate as the ship slowed down, entering orbit around the target planet after getting approval from the security protocols of the Gaian alliance.

“We’ve arrived at Planet Sarantel of Arima III,” the pilot informed them. “Would you like to opt for a pod, or…?”

“We’ll jump, thanks,” she replied. The man raised an eyebrow. “You look awfully young. Do you have licenses for manual planetary entry?”

“Yes,” she transmitted her license to the man with her neural inlay. “Thanks for your concern and hospitability.

“Martial Master…” The man nodded. “Not bad at the age of twenty-eight. Alright, goodbye. Feel free to use Bradt Distribution Services any time!”

“Thanks, let’s go to Runark.”

He followed her quickly as the two of them headed towards the launching trapdoor. “Man, I can’t wait to get back into adventuring,” Runark grinned with an excited expression. “Meeting mom and dad after so long was fun, though. What about you?”

Her expression darkened. “Let’s go. We don’t have time to waste. We have a lot of work to do.”