Chapter 387: Departure |
Whatever interludes took place in between, the final decision was that Immortal Yuan Hao would board the Hotel with Xuan Che and travel with Yu Sheng’s party to the frontier, to the planet Sentinel Silence, to seek traces of Yun Qing Zi and those Black-robed Cultivators.
To be honest, Yu Sheng respected and valued Immortal Yuan Hao’s “extensive experience with navigation accidents.”
He trusted his own superb piloting skills and the Hotel’s advanced performance to handle this little frontier journey, but it would still be his first time actually piloting a ship to a destination tens of thousands of light-years away. Bringing the ship back to the valley last time had not been a voyage at all; he had simply opened a door and transferred it. This time he would complete a true, end-to-end journey.
The road would be long, and operational snags large and small were bound to appear. Having a seasoned deep-space hand along was reassuring.
Once the ship’s resident Special Service technicians finished their handover with the starport crews, the Hotel completed its final preflight checks.
Just then, as the party prepared to board, a familiar aura flared nearby and halted Yu Sheng mid-step. He followed the sensation and saw several shadow wolves leap from the surrounding darkness, the strongest pack leader bearing a familiar red-clad figure on its back.
Yu Sheng arched a brow and asked, amused: “What are you doing here?”
Red Hood rode the wolf up to him, a faint smile on her lips, and said: “To see you off, and to watch a starship launch. Keeping Rapunzel at home was no easy task.”
“I was wondering why that girl hadn’t shown,” Yu Sheng chuckled. “If she were here, she would be rolling on the ground to get aboard.”
At her description Yu Sheng involuntarily shivered, imagining what Rapunzel in full-throttle mode would look like: a line of toddlers in little yellow caps with tiny water flasks slung over their shoulders, led by a bunch of thirteen- and fourteen-year-old youngsters as they filed onto the ship, while Rapunzel, Snow White, and the mermaid kicked up a ruckus. After launch it would only get worse. Converting one kid into the equivalent of One Hundred Thousand Whys, he would be facing several million whys. [Piloting a tumble washer with an engine through the hazardous frontier while besieged by a horde of human kids asking millions of questions… even by Hotel standards, that would be too explosive.]
Given that all subsystems on the Hotel were offline, the ship was in essence a tumble washer with an engine. [There is no universe where I fly a glorified washing machine into danger with dozens of kids aboard.] He broke into a cold sweat and looked at Red Hood with gratitude and relief. In a Fairy Tale crew that was getting more and more unrestrained by the day, it was a blessing to have a mature, steady Red Hood to catch the fallout. With Rapunzel’s fearless, idea-a-second personality, the entire Fairy Tale organization would otherwise be in shambles.
Red Hood’s gentle voice broke his drifting thoughts as she said with a warm smile: “Travel safely. If you need help, I am here.”
Yu Sheng returned to himself, saw the red-clad girl smiling before him, and slowly smiled back as he said: “All right, I am off. Those little brats are in your hands.”
“Okay, bye-bye,” she said.
A hatch opened in the Hotel’s belly. Yu Sheng and the others stepped through, their figures vanishing into the depths.
He had actually planned to open a portal straight to the bridge, but this was their first formal voyage and he wanted a bit of ceremony, so he boarded through the main door instead. [First proper voyage; a little ritual will not hurt.]
Moments later the towering spire on the platform began to emit a low rumble, and the whole “tower” shivered faintly.
After many days of slumber, the core system woke again. The reactor eased from low-power standby into normal operation. Surging energy flowed into the engines and anti-gravity assemblies, and the ship’s silhouette turned shimmering and translucent.
Then the emission grilles along the stern lit in sequence, the massive triangular emblem at midships flared, and without deafening thunder or earth-shaking exhaust, the starship built on the Reverent Monastic Order’s dark technology rose gently from the dock. With the solemn, subdued hum of its anti-gravity unit, it climbed higher and higher, drifting toward the valley’s sky boundary.
At that special altitude the ship blurred into a phantom. A rift like a slit in space flashed open within, and the entire vessel bent and flipped around the fissure in an instant, vanishing from Red Hood’s sight without a sound.
An instant too brief for human senses later, the Hotel had already slipped into real space, arriving as if from nowhere in an empty region near the Grand Void Spiritual Axis.
This was precisely where Foxy had passed when she accompanied Yu Sheng and the others to the Great Nether before. With nothing nearby, Yu Sheng had chosen it as the “exit port” to release the Hotel into real space.
On the bridge hall at the top of the spire, the ship’s control system began reporting post-wake parameters: “Control system nominal. Reactor nominal. Power management and feedback nominal. Power network load at thirty percent. Engines nominal. Hull sensor system partially offline. All subsystems offline.”
A low hum reverberated through the hall. Console seats woke from sleep, and the holographic projections before each station flared to life in a blizzard of data and graphs. On the far side of the bridge the giant viewing window opened. Protective armor retracted, and beyond the pale-blue pane that glimmered with a faint force-field haze stretched the horizon of the Grand Void Spiritual Axis and, farther yet, the deep scatter of endless stars.
Irene shot across the control hall like a little rocket, scrambled onto the inner ledge of the window, and nearly pressed her face to the ultra-strong charged polymer as she cried: “Wow! Wahahaha, it is space!”
Yu Sheng’s voice drifted over from nearby as he said: “It is not your first time in space. Do you have to be this excited?”
“It is different,” Irene chirped, bouncing along the window ledge, her little face practically glowing. “This thing actually flew. Our own ship. Not rented, not borrowed, not hitchhiked.”
“All right, I get it, but stop bouncing in front of me. I am already dizzy,” Yu Sheng said, standing behind the captain’s chair and looking helplessly at the overexcited doll. “Luna, grab her and hold her down.”
A heartbeat later Irene shrieked: “C-lock! I will fight you!” She did not win. The bridge finally quieted.
Yu Sheng exhaled, working through the brief vertigo caused by releasing the ship into real space, then sank his mind and synchronized his will a notch deeper with the Hotel.
Foxy stood beside him, worry on her face, and asked: “Benefactor, are you all right?”
“No problem, just a little dizzy, much better than last time,” Yu Sheng said with a wave. “Pulling this ship out of the otherworld can only be done by teleportation. It is basically opening a huge door and moving it through. Because during teleport I am one with the ship, it feels like I am flipping inside out again and again.”
Foxy thought hard, ears twitching, then admitted: “I do not understand.”
“No big deal,” Yu Sheng laughed, ruffling the fox’s head. He dropped into the captain’s chair and pulled a thick manual from the side pocket. “Let me see what comes next. What does the code say… right, start the conventional engines and throttle up to exit the planetary gravity well. Safety Navigation Rule Thirty-Six: you may only engage the jump drive after clearing starport facilities and the near-orbit deceleration zone.”
As he spoke, he lifted his hand, as if feeling the ship around him, slowly turned his palm, and closed his fingers. The Hotel’s bow navigation lights switched on.
“Lights on before accelerating. If other spacecraft are nearby, also enable anti-collision outline projection and the presence indicator,” he read, then stopped, glanced into a corner of the hall, and called: “Hey, expert, what is a presence indicator?”
Several Special Service technicians were seated at the monitoring stations. The baldest of them looked up at Yu Sheng’s question and replied: “This ship does not have a presence indicator. That is for small craft. A starship the size of the Hotel has all the presence it needs the moment its engines begin to preheat.”
“Oh, got it. Like those several-meter flagpoles strapped to little mine carts. Big ships do not need them,” Yu Sheng nodded, then engaged the Hotel’s conventional boosters. A deep vibration thrummed from the depths of the hall. He lifted the manual again, face intent, and said: “Now, let me check the next page.”
Watching all this, Xuan Che’s expression went rigid. After a long beat he turned to the man at his side and murmured: “Grand Senior Uncle…”
“Do not panic, Che,” Immortal Yuan Hao replied, his face a shade stiff but steadier than Xuan Che’s. “Your senior uncle has abundant experience with navigation accidents. Wilderness survival works too.”
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