They landed on blood-red soil. Before they disembarked, Yaliriga pushed Luo Binhan into a small, cylindrical chamber.
"What for?" Luo Binhan asked.
"You need to change," Yaliriga said. "The atmosphere here is mostly carbon dioxide and nitrogen, the gravity is too low, and there’s a small amount of harmful radiation."
Luo Binhan ducked into the chamber without another word. "Where are the clothes?" he asked, looking left and right.
The chamber door snapped shut. Several thin rings clamped down on his hands, feet, and waist as the surrounding metal walls pressed in on him.
Luo Binhan let out his customary scream, but a jet of steam immediately sprayed him in the face, making him choke and cough uncontrollably. Then, his eyes were covered by some kind of soft plastic ring. He felt several small mechanical arms moving all over his body, emitting a soft buzzing sound.
When he was tossed out, he found himself wearing an off-white jumpsuit. It felt a bit like sateen, but it was much thicker and puffed out as if it were inflated.
"You guys have a kinky way of putting on clothes," Luo Binhan said, feeling the fabric. "Why isn’t it made of alloy?"
Yaliriga turned to look at him from the doorway. "Alloys are usually for combat armor," she said. "You won’t have a chance to use it."
The massive door behind her retracted upward. A gale of wind and red sand rushed in from outside. Luo Binhan immediately felt his vision take on a blue tint.
He reached up to touch it and found a transparent blue membrane covering his head. It was light and thin, but felt quite hard to the touch.
"That’s memory-plate Armor. It automatically detects environmental readings. Memory armor is often overly sensitive, so it’s best not to touch it," Yaliriga said as he poked at it.
"Plate Armor?" Luo Binhan froze, his hand still poised to tap the blue membrane.
"The ’plate’ material is a specific synthetic element," Yaliriga corrected. "Its proton structure is extremely dense and can’t form in most natural environments. Its special properties after polymerization make it ideal for protective gear."
Luo Binhan stared at her goat-like horns. "How do you know so much?"
"I slept with a materials scientist," Yaliriga said nonchalantly.
Luo Binhan was incredibly envious. The emotion clouded his powers of observation, and it wasn’t until they had left the ship that he was struck by the realization that Yaliriga hadn’t changed. Her clothes were revealing; it looked as if she had just wrapped a gauze towel around her torso and another around her waist. Luo Binhan had only seen such a risqué outfit a few times on a summer resort beach.
He asked with even greater admiration, "So you’re the legendary type with radiation-proof skin, a gravity-defying body, and photosynthetic breathing?"
Yaliriga’s lips curled into a smile amidst the howling red wind. "My armor is subdermally implanted—inside my skin, trachea, and nerves," she said. "Want some too? I know who to call to arrange the implant surgery. It’s fast, and it doesn’t hurt at all."
Luo Binhan shook his head frantically, terrified.
They walked across a black metal skywalk toward the Fishbone, which was billowing thick smoke. From the ground, it towered like a mountain, its surface covered in scale-like armor that looked a bit like charcoal. The hull was riddled with thousands of holes and looked to be in terrible shape; dust was still flaking off of it. Luo Binhan was starting to regret coming along.
Before entering the Fishbone, he looked back and, for the first time, saw the exterior of the Silence with his own eyes.
A ship as dark and lightless as deep space.
It was only a third of the Fishbone’s size, but it was still enormous to Luo Binhan. At such a close distance, he could hardly make out its overall silhouette. The armor plating covering the ship’s surface was arranged like the feathers of a bird or the scales of a fish, staggered yet harmonious. Luo Binhan didn’t know their specific function; he could only vaguely perceive a complex, cold, and metallic beauty in the ship’s details.
Yaliriga pulled him inside the Fishbone.
In a corridor flashing with red lights, several figures lay scattered about. ’Figures’ was a better word than ’people,’ as they came in all shapes. A white mist filled the air. They were all wearing jumpsuits similar to Luo Binhan’s, so all he could tell was that they, like him, at least had four limbs. He couldn’t make out their faces.
Yaliriga led him to a large hall filled with monitors and control consoles. It was a regular octagon, surrounded by floating blue screens, and a strange buzzing sound echoed in the air. In the very center of the hall was a Crystal Pillar that glowed with a silvery-white light.
This looked more like the starship bridge Luo Binhan had always imagined than the round hall on the Silence did.
Jing Huang and Momo Luo were standing at the far end of the hall, farthest from the entrance. Jing Huang had his foot planted on someone.
As a veteran of the "rich second generation," Luo Binhan quickly noticed that the person’s clothes were much more refined than the others’—the fabric was smoother, the colors more complex, and it even had patterns that might be more than just decorative.
Someone tugged on Luo Binhan’s hand. He looked down and saw Sunday looking up at him.
Luo Binhan immediately noticed she was still in her navy-style dress, white strappy sandals, and that inscrutable pufferfish hair clip. She was neat and clean, without a speck of red sand on her.
"Luo, Luo," she said. "Clothes so ugly. Off, off."
Luo Binhan sucked in a pained breath, then resolutely pushed her away. "Stop focusing on looks. It’s so shallow."
Jing Huang started kicking the person under his foot.
"Where are the goods?" he asked coldly.
Beside him, Momo Luo sighed and said in a gentle tone, "Mr. Xuanhong, you can’t be so rough with a prisoner..."
The ship’s master let out a sort of creaking, grating sound from under Jing Huang’s foot. The syllables sounded like human laughter, but Luo Binhan could tell from the language he’d recently learned that it was a groan of pain. The captive turned his head toward Luo Binhan, revealing an inverted triangular face.
Luo Binhan thought the facial features were largely the same as his own, just with grayish-white skin that had the texture of rough sandstone, and with many coral-like growths sprouting from the top of his head and face.
"Who are you?" he asked Jing Huang in an unfamiliar language.
Jing Huang immediately landed another kick and said viciously, "I’m your daddy."
"It’s not good to lie, Mr. Xuanhong," Momo Luo interjected gently. "You can’t give birth to one of the Qin Sang People."
Jing Huang ignored him and kicked the captive again. The master of the Fishbone was sweating profusely, as if being roasted by fire. A reddish liquid seeped from his skin and coagulated instantly upon exposure to the air. He said intermittently, "We are... Liweidaya. Your actions will be remembered..."
"Yeah, by your mom," Jing Huang said, kicking him in the stomach.
"Our power extends throughout the periphery of the Alliance," the master’s words trembled with pain, a strange buzzing in his throat. "We... not even the laws of the Alliance can stop us..."
"No shit," Jing Huang said. "You’re the ones I’m robbing. If you were legal, there’d be way less profit in it. Why would I rob poor schmucks?"
The master’s trembling body went still. His bulging eyes first stared at Jing Huang, then slowly turned to Yaliriga, shifting back and forth between the two.
He suddenly stopped groaning. "Silence," he said. "The Black Swallow Ship, the Mystic Rainbow Jade... You are the Silence."
Jing Huang kicked him again. "Silence your mom. Cut the crap. Where are the goods? If you don’t fess up, I’ll scatter your ashes to the wind."
"Mr. Xuanhong, you can’t!" Momo Luo said, urgent and sincere. "Please, think about it. The universe we inhabit is so vast and profound. Stars shine, fade, are born, and are destroyed, endlessly cycling through life and death. What a lonely yet gentle world! Life is as lonely as the stars, and every single one is precious..."
"Precious my ass," Jing Huang said. "Last time you destroyed three satellites with just your stray beams. If we hadn’t run fast enough, you’d have been thrown in the fucking slammer. You unlucky bastard, you just love to court disaster."
He angrily started kicking the master of the Fishbone again.
The master moaned and whimpered miserably. The appalling brutality made it impossible for Luo Binhan to just stand by and watch. He hurried forward and pulled Jing Huang aside.
"Jing, Jing, that’s enough," he said, patting Jing Huang’s shoulder. "We can scatter his ashes, but let’s leave his mom out of it. Nowadays, anyone who wants to make a name for themselves has to be a hard-boiled orphan, right? Let’s not go there. Let’s not. Keep moms out of our underworld feuds."
Jing Huang impatiently slapped his hand away. "What mom? The Qin Sang don’t have mothers. They reproduce collectively and are handed over to the military after birth. Don’t get in the way of my interrogation."
"No, wait," Luo Binhan said. "Let me do it. I’m an expert at this."
Jing Huang looked at him skeptically.
"Whenever my relatives’ kids run away from home, who do you think is the one who coaxes them into coming back?"
In the end, Luo Binhan got permission. He sat down cross-legged in front of the master of the Fishbone. He really wanted a high-quality cigarette, but he didn’t have any on him. All he could do was forlornly take out his silver lighter and flick it on and off.
"Life’s rough, ain’t it, old buddy?" he asked the master of the Fishbone quietly.
The man stared at him with a dull gaze. Luo Binhan took that as a yes and let out a long sigh.
"It’s supposed to be rough," he said, patting the man’s midsection sorrowfully. "That’s life for you."