N-A-A Chapter 84 Long Voyage
Chapter 84 Long Voyage
Chapter 84 Long Voyage
Subspace travel has entered its fifth month.
The portholes were tightly shut, and heavy adamantite armor shut everything out. From the bridge, the purple chaos outside was invisible; only the cold white light of the holographic projector and the flashing indicator lights on the Thinker terminals could be seen. Time became blurred here; the crew no longer counted the days, relying solely on the watch roster and the mess hall bell to mark the passage of day and night.
But the Black Pearl's voyage remained as smooth as ever. The hull was perfectly still, the Galler position readings drew an almost straight line on the dial, and the subspace engine output curves were as smooth as meticulously calibrated standard waveforms. There was no turbulence, no vibration, no that tooth-grinding tremor that surged from deep within the hull. The veterans had long been accustomed to this smoothness, and the new recruits gradually stopped being alarmed in the first few months.
The mess hall continued to offer unlimited food. The training ground reservation records flipped through page after page; the recruits of the garrison regiment had progressed remarkably, from barely being able to stand in their power armor to now being able to perform tactical rolls. But the long voyage continued to test everyone's nerves. Some sat in the mess hall all day without a word, some trained themselves to exhaustion on the training ground, and some knelt before the Imperial Statue for hours on end. Kara didn't yell at them—she herself occasionally stood by the porthole, staring blankly at the cold armored panel. Several more patients came to Dr. Liss's medical bay seeking sedatives for insomnia.
Cohen observed all of this but said nothing. Some things are better left unsaid; things will fall into place once the ship arrives.
He was spending more and more time in the private workshop.
The field continued to expand. Universal atoms from the subspace surged in like a tide, the decomposition commands fell silently, and atoms were stripped, collected, and stored. The reserves in the warehouse swelled to a number he was too lazy to even calculate within five months. The subspace matter concentration around the ship continued to decrease, forming an ever-expanding sparse region—this was the root cause of the Black Pearl's unusually smooth voyage.
Most of the time, he kept his eyes closed. His consciousness sank into a higher dimension, examining the blueprints for the asteroid named "Wangshu".
The rocky outcrop, hundreds of kilometers in diameter, on the outer edge of the Galos system, is no longer the empty shell it was just a few months ago. Enpu has poured five months of his heart and soul into it: the thousands of giant fusion chambers of the reactor array have all taken shape, and the adamantine skeleton has grown out from within the rock layers, firmly locking the entire asteroid's structure. The "Wangshu" blueprint in the higher-dimensional space unfolds layer by layer, from the core reactor cluster to the outer production line layout, from the logistics channels of the storage area to the data bus topology of the computing nodes. Each layer has undergone dozens of optimizations under the iterative verification of the Thinker's mainframe. On the energy system page: the power allocation scheme from thousands of virtual simulations has been finalized, the three potential bottlenecks in the cooling pipes have been reinforced by Enpu himself, and all the red warning marks on the blueprint have been eliminated, leaving only stable green confirmation symbols. The production line cluster page shows that the model configuration of the servant production line has expanded from the general engineering type to seven or eight special models. The production cycle, material consumption, and buffer capacity of each model have been precisely calculated—not by him, but by the computing power hub. He only needs to confirm on the final report. On the computing node page, the installation location of the secondary thinker host, the orientation of the communication array, and the data synchronization protocol with the Garros mainframe have all been finalized, and the load test of the local processing core has passed the peak pressure verification.
He marked three passages that needed to be widened and two cache locations that needed to be added on the blueprint, labeled them "to be constructed", and then exited the high-dimensional space.
Consciousness was withdrawn from this body.
Enp opened his eyes in the life support module. The hatch slid open, the nutrient solution receded, and dry air rushed in. He sat up, pulled on a dark gray robe, lowered the hood, and walked barefoot onto the terracotta floor, heading towards the observation platform through the corridor.
The changes inside "Wangshu" are visible to the naked eye. Dozens of giant fusion chambers of the reactor array are arranged in a neat matrix within the rock strata. The low-frequency humming in standby mode travels through kilometers of rock, causing the adamantite railings to tremble slightly. The production line cluster area is brightly lit, with dozens of servant production lines operating day and night. Batches of engineering servants roll off the assembly line and line up to go to their respective workstations. The materials in the buffer area are neatly stacked, the aisles are wide, and logistics flatbed trucks shuttle along the tracks—the buffer slots he had marked earlier have been widened, and the idle rate of the production line has decreased by more than half. The computing node cabins are located deeper in the rock strata, where the indicator lights of dozens of Thinker mainframes form a dark red line in the darkness.
The other three Odysseus-class ships—the Courageous, the Hercules, and the Extraordinary—have all been completed and have entered the Garros Space Port. The three giant ships slowly docked under the guidance lights of the berth area, the aged marks on their armor plating gleaming with a dull, cold gray sheen under the spotlights. Crew assignments are underway, with each ship equipped with a small number of combatants, regularly rotated from the defense forces.
The remaining work no longer required his personal involvement. Wangshu's framework had been erected, the reactor had been ignited, the production line was operational, and the computing nodes were online. Under the coordination of the central computing hub, the engineering servitors worked day and night, and everything was on track.
Enpu stood on the observation platform for a while, confirming the status of all critical systems, then turned and walked back to the life support module. He lay down and closed his eyes. Consciousness returned.
In the Black Pearl's private workshop, Cohen opened his eyes. He stood up and walked out of the workshop.
The corridor lights shone a cool white light in daytime mode. The veteran on duty at the corner saluted and nodded. Marcus walked towards him, the blue halo of his right mechanical eye expanding and contracting slightly.
"Captain. We've been in subspace for five months now. The navigator says we're more than halfway there, and we expect to reach the edge of the Istvan system in another month or so. The signal from the Star Torch has been very clear."
Cohen nodded. A technician ran past them, carrying a roll of data cable and muttering, "The communications terminal on Deck Seven is giving another error." Marcus stepped aside, followed the technician for a short distance, and then turned back.
Cohen walked to a porthole at the end of the corridor, placed his palm on the cold armor plate, stood there for a moment, and then turned and walked into the reception room.
No one was waiting for him in the reception room. The cauldron at the foot of the imperial statue burned with frankincense, its smoke swirling slowly beneath the dome. The adamantine imperial statue gleamed dimly under the cold white light, and its eyes, cast to gaze forward, seemed to come alive in the flickering candlelight. He stood before the statue, not praying, but simply standing there.
A faint, intermittent sound seeped through the underlying noise of the communication panel. He turned up the gain, and the sound became clearer—it wasn't speech, but the echo of a psionic pulse, like someone shouting in the distance, or some kind of echo from the depths of the warp.
Hera Voss's voice followed, hoarse and calm. "Captain. The interstellar communication array has detected a weak signal originating from the Solar System. The signal is severely attenuated; only a few words can be deciphered—'Greenskin,' 'Assemble.' The source is likely a sentry post in the direction of Amegiddon."
Cohen pressed the communication button. "Received. Continue listening, report any new messages immediately."
"Yes, Captain." Hera's voice fell silent.
He stood silently before the icon for a moment, then turned and left the reception room, walked past the cargo hold where supplies were piled up, past the busy transfer corridor of the service crew, and into the private workshop. The hatch closed.
The subspace journey will last another month or so. Istvan 1I, those sealed secrets, those ancient ruins untouched by anyone. He doesn't need anyone's data core to tell him the coordinates; he's always had it in his mind.
The Black Pearl continued its journey through subspace. Its course was set, and the ship continued its course. As always, smoothly and steadily.
He leaned back in his chair. In the higher dimensions, the star map unfolded, and the light from the Istvan I was as dim as death.
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