Chapter 4281: Returning Home |
The five of them arrived at the transit ports at the edge of the city, walking into the line for one of the exit gates, pulling out their ID. It wasn’t long after the due process of their departure that they eventually stepped outside.
They stepped into a vast, reddish-brown, barren land that stretched as far as the eye could see.
WHOOSH...
A strong wind blew past their exosuits as the smell of iron hung in the air. The hum of distant mass mining stations, extracting resources from the planet, trembled through the ground.
"Are you sure all of you have everything?" Ria turned back towards her party members. "Last chance before we get going."
"I have everything," Runark confirmed. "We can just buy whatever we’re missing once we reach Gaia 792 anyway."
She nodded, turning back towards the reddish sky of the planet. The two red dwarf stars hung about each other as they traveled through it. It was the equivalent of afternoon on the planet, even if the day and night cycle wasn’t exactly clean due to the presence of two stars instead of one.
She transmitted a message to the Jarkarthar Space Station Administration before nodding.
"Let’s get going."
She activated her Martial Heart, shooting into the air as she sky-walked towards outer space. The others followed suit as the five of them took off into the atmosphere. They didn’t want to bother with the space elevators or the space pods, since that cost money and took time. As pathwalkers of the fourth rank, they could easily get to space with their own power.
They had to do it outside the city, however, since manual land-orbit travel was not permitted from within the city.
WHOOSH!
As they shot into the sky at high speeds, the entirety of the world around them grew smaller and hazier as they got to greater and greater heights. In the distance of the sky, the Jakarthar Space Station was visible.
A giant ring around the planet so large that it was visible relative even to the planet itself. It connected to space elevators and intercepted pods plunging towards it by space hooks.
It was the space infrastructure that handled most orbital travel activity.
WHOOSH...
They arrived into outer space, shooting towards the space station at high speeds. Messages started transmitting to their neural inlays in rapid succession as the Jakarthar Space Station coordinated their arrival.
[Pathwalkers Ria Quarrier, please coordinate trajectory and landing procedures. Adjust trajectory by one-point-five degrees...]
WHOOSH...
Eventually, an electromagnetic tractor beam intercepted them, pulling them into a space dock.
THUD
They landed on the metal ground the moment they entered the artificial gravity within the dock.
CLACK
The gates shut behind them as several Martial Masters gestured to the scanners in the dock. Security aboard the space station was treated extremely seriously; of course, it was why the five of them had carried light luggage that could pass through security check-ins very easily.
VMMM...
Deep-body radiation penetrated every millimeter of their bodies, searching for anything that could even remotely pose danger to the space station. It was a good half hour before they finally let us through.
BZZZT
The doors before them opened, allowing them into a giant corridor of countless tracks filled with the dense, high-speed traffic of floating carriers. The space station stretched across many thousands of kilometers, making travel by food impractical. The highly robust and efficient high-speed floating carrier system allowed millions of people to travel across its length in minutes.
"Where’s our space shuttle?" Runark asked, referring to his digital ticket.
"Gate #76,812," she replied. "Let’s get going. I don’t want to miss our flight to Gaia 792."
They boarded a floating carrier that held on to them with inertial stabilizers before zooming off at speeds that they would struggle with even if they were moving as fast as they could on foot.
It wasn’t long before they arrived at their gate, a bridge that was connected to their space shuttle, a hundred-man starliner with the company’s name and crest boldly engraved upon the body of the shuttle.
[Bradt Transportation Services]
The inside of the shuttle was filled with dozens of passengers, half of whom were low-level pathwalkers. The other half were mostly normal individuals, personnel taking a break from the intense life at the frontier to head back into the comfier parts of human civilization.
They stood out even as they made their way to their table. Pathwalkers could tell just how powerful they were, while the presence of Sternon made everybody nervous.
"I’m sorry about that," Ria whispered to him.
"It’s fine, I’m used to it," he shrugged nonchalantly. "How many flights to Gaia Prime again?"
"Two, including this one," Ria remarked. "There are no direct shuttles from Planet Sarantel to Gaia Prime, too remote. But there are plenty from Gaia 792 to Gaia Prime. We should be there in a little under a week."
"For the direct flight from Gaia 792 to Gaia Prime, book something comfortable; I’m going to die if I have to sit in a chair for a week," Runark told her.
"Will do."
Interstellar transportation technology had reached new heights since the inception of the Era of Expansion. At the very start of the age of stars, traveling between one star system and another, a travel distance of five light-years on average, took a month.
Now, traveling between a hundred light-years took a week. The sheer rate at which superluminal transportation technology had improved was truly astronomical, allowing humanity to expand while maintaining civilizational cohesion with a healthy amount of trade and transportation from one corner of human civilization to another.
And yet, by the time they arrived at Planet Gaia Prime, they were still completely exhausted.
DING
The ring of an announcement hung in the air as the voice of an artificial voice rang in the air.
"We have now arrived at our destination, the Solar System."
WHOOSH
The space shuttle exited FTL, arriving at the birthplace of human civilization. Ria’s amber eyes grew deep as she beheld the familiar yet distant solar system at the center of human civilization, the star Sol, and, of course, the bright beacon that was Gaia Prime.
"We’re home."
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