Age of Cosmic Exploration

Chapter 306: One Day!
Chapter 306: One Day!

Translator: EndlessFantasy TranslationEditor: EndlessFantasy Translation

Blue 6 was someone with military power.

In the Blue Race, that meant he had a certain degree of power. The Blue Race wasn’t a pure autocratic society, the people were loyal to their king by choice. This was a law created right after Blue Race came back from the brink of extinction. Everyone withheld this law. To put it simply, if the common people wished for their own residences to be a place barred from royal presence, then even the Emperor had no right to enter their houses.

With great power comes great responsibility. Blue 6 was given the 46th fleet, so he was also responsible for paying their salaries and maintaining and upgrading their equipment. Blue 6’s own assets were enough to cover all these expenses, so he wasn’t worried about that.

The thing he was worried about was what kind of spaceship he should use to enter the ruins. Should he use the spaceship from his own fleet or wrangle another through his connections?

Even though the 46th fleet was already his underlings and, according to Blue Race’s culture, this meant that the 46th fleet’s soldiers would never betray him, this didn’t mean that they would follow his orders unconditionally. This required extended interaction over time to foster loyalty. However, time was exactly the thing Blue 6 was lacking. He felt the ruins would disappear at any moment.

Therefore…

”A tourism spaceship?”

Blue 6’s request form had been handed to the officials, and in it, he stated that he wished to apply for a tourism spaceship to leave the mothership. Not soon after, the royal committee caught wind of this development. Even the Emperor found out about it.

The Emperor was in the middle of dinner when the information made its way to him. He first frowned before turning to ask one of the royal committee members, ”What is Blue 6 planning? Using a tourism spaceship to get near the ruins?”

A few royal committee members were having dinner with the Emperor. One of them laughed and said, ”This afternoon, Baron Blue Light enquired Blue 6 about this, and he said he wished to continue exploring the space ruins to obtain more information and data on it. He promised explicitly to not do anything dangerous, like entering it.”

The Emperor thought about it and nodded. ”It does seem like he means it. The tourism spaceship is smaller and thus more agile than military spaceships. If this is not to enter the ruin but just to scout it, then the choice of a tourism spaceship does makes more sense… How many people does he plan to bring with him?”

Another royal commitee member added quickly, ”According to his request, there will be 11, including Blue 6, 5 Second grade bionic men and 5 spaceship operators.”

The Emperor nodded to himself, took a sip of the Mai Nong blood, and added, ”He didn’t bring along that 50 bionic personal guards? Then approve of his request. He couldn’t possibly enter the ruins with so few people, he’s not that crazy. After all, he’s a Time Watcher, so his acuity towards danger is much stronger than ours… He’s still young, so desire for power comes hand in hand. Let him be then.”

Just like that, after Blue 6 finished his dinner, he received news that his request was approved. He could leave the mothership in the afternoon of the next day.

”Perfect, the plan’s a success. Taking few people with me didn’t raise their suspicion. If I didn’t borrow the reason of scouting the ruins, then I wouldn’t be given the chance to leave the mothership… No matter, because tomorrow, I must enter the ruins!”

At the same time, within the Hope, Ren Tao, Yao Yuan, Eva, Guang Zhen, Bo Li, the Black Star Unit, and a host of people who knew were waiting in the secret meeting room. Everyone was wearing a worried expression, and they were waiting for Xiao Niao to give them the information they needed.

Yes, one more day and it would be the date ZERO promised they could space warp. However, no one could tell for sure whether ZERO would appear early or late. In the earlier space warps, ZERO once appeared 8 hours earlier than expected and several hours late in others. They were rushing for time. Xiao Niao stationed himself in front of his home pc. The moment contact was made with ZERO, he would send the information to the secret meeting room immediately.

Yao Yuan lit another cigarette. However, it didn’t take long for him to snuff it out. He looked at the clock and said, ”It’s already 8 PM. Why don’t we go have dinner first? We need food to have energy, and we might be here for a long time, so we must eat.”

With Yao Yuan’s orders, simple servings of dinner appeared in the room. Everyone was given one serving. They were lunch boxes and not really full course meals. However, even if it was the best meal in the world, it would be tasteless to the people there. In fact, there were many that couldn’t even bring themselves to eat. Other than the Black Star Unit, only Zhang Heng, who had trained alongside the Black Star Unit, took bites of the food… or rather, they shoved the food into their mouths forcefully. Other people didn’t even have the energy to lift up the spoons. They were too occupied with other things.

Yao Yuan chewed on his food and studied the people in the room. He sighed inwardly. He couldn’t blame them; after all, death normally came unannounced, so this kind of long wait for possible death was torturous. Nobody knew whether the aliens would barge into the Hope the next second. They needed more than bravery to face this possibility, they had to have steeled hearts and minds. Those were things limited to soldiers and not common citizens, so Yao Yuan understood why they had no appetite.

”One more day, the last day. ZERO, please, you mustn’t be late!”

Yao Yuan mumbled under his breath. Suddenly, he thought about the time when he remembered the natural attraction he had toward cosmic adapters. At the time, the Observer bots were sent out of the Hope. When they finally returned, what they saw recorded by the robots made their hearts skip several beats.

Not far away from the Hope was a small spaceship idling. This was obviously a scouting ship meant to enter the Hope!

Even though the ship had already distanced itself from the Hope, the fear remained. What if they hadn’t sent out the Observer bots then? Would the spaceship have entered the Hope just like that? Would humanity have survived? The final solution was Yao Yuan pushing the self-destruct button and ending humanity once and for all. This made a few senior scientists faint from anxiousness. In fact, there were still two of them lying at the hospital.

So far, the aliens hadn’t entered the Hope, but nobody knew whether the aliens would send out a third exploration party and this time finally enter the Hope. This was especially true after Eva had lost her Sage power.

Yao Yuan turned to look at Eva. The little girl was smothered by a huge, fleece, winter coat. The Hope’s internal temperature was maintained at a constant 20 degrees; it wasn’t too warm nor too cold. The reason Eva was wearing so many layers was because she was extremely weakened.

The girl’s face barely had any color and she kept on yawning. She looked like she didn’t have the energy to even straighten herself up, much less eat. However, there was nothing wrong with her body according to the doctors. In reality, Yao Yuan and other people knew that as long as she stopped using her power, she would instantly recover, but at such a sensitive time, no one dared to ask her to go rest, even if it might kill the girl. Eva knew that she was the last straw keeping the Hope alive, so she clenched her teeth and tried her best to hold out until the very end.

One more day and everything would be over…

With this thought, Yao Yuan swallowed his last bite of food. When he passed his plate away, Eva suddenly yelled out and stood up from her chair with a shocked expression.

”They’re here! I see it now. Tomorrow, there will a small ship entering the Hope and 6 aliens will come down from it… They are in the Hope! The aliens are inside the Hope! It’s over… Wait, Xiao Niao finally came over with the news. ZERO is here, she’s finally here!”

The room was silent as they watched Eva. When the girl seemed to have finished, they all turned to look at Yao Yuan.

Yao Yuan looked at Eva’s blanched face and her slightly swaying body. His heart was pained, but for the safety of 200,000 people, he clenched his teeth and said, ”Use the Supermagnetic Planet Annihilating Rail-Cannon, use the cannon to demolish the ship! And then we will warp away!”

Eva’s face seemed to turn paler. This was the effect of exerting her power. The girl suddenly coughed up a pool of blood and she seemed to be ready to faint. Before she collapsed, she said in a hurry, ”The ship was destroyed and no aliens entered the Hope… No, that’s because the Hope is destroyed. The mothership from far away gathered many energy beams and the Hope completely evaporated in the energy beam…”

After all that, Eva completely collapsed. Curiously enough, color started to return to her face. It looked just like what happened to Jay before he went into the coma!

The second prediction silenced the room once more. Everyone once again turned to focus on Yao Yuan, and his face was as pale as Eva’s from earlier.

”…Then we shall capture these aliens! The mothership will hesitate to attack, because their people will be on the ship. We will take advantage of this confusion to warp away!

”Ol’ Wong, gather the Black Star Troopers and assign each platoon with a mature Black Dragon… We need to detain this group of alien infiltrators in the shortest amount of time!”