“We have reached the target location.”
“We are currently approaching the outer region of the galaxy. Jump points are extremely sparse here. Continued exploration is not recommended.”
Alerts sounded throughout the ship’s cabin, their voices gentle and soothing.
Cheng Weilu lifted her face from her meal, still chewing slowly and methodically. After a moment of thought, she raised her spoon and tapped the tabletop panel, bringing up a star map that projected into the air.
“Xiao Wei, scan the surrounding area for any planets and universal distress signals.”
“Understood. Scanning now.”
Against the light-blue background of the star map, the jump points were scattered throughout the galaxy like tiny islands of light. They were an essential safeguard for interstellar travel.
Inside a jump point, an engine could fold space, greatly reducing the straight-line distance and travel time required for a spaceship to reach its destination. Meanwhile, the small red dot representing the spaceship’s current location flickered faintly, like a grain of sand in the vast ocean.
Only now, it seemed that this grain of sand had drifted too far from the islands.
After finishing her meal, Cheng Weilu put down her spoon and sat there spacing out for several minutes. Then she placed the utensils back into the cleaning box and left the main cabin for the control room to check the results.
In just a few minutes, Xiao Wei had already displayed the results on the main control screen:
“The nearest planet to the spaceship is U2033.”
“Ninety-two signal scans have been attempted. No universal distress signals have been detected.”
A robot standing only as high as her waist came over. Its appearance was humanoid, with an all-metal shell and a small cloth pouch slung diagonally across its body. Two thin metal needles were held between its mechanical hands as it skillfully knitted a partially completed lake-blue woolen hat, occasionally tugging at the yarn from the pouch.
The robot looked at the screen and asked, “A Luo, we’ve already come this far, but we still haven’t picked up any signals. Could there really be nothing out here? Are we not going to make this money?”
“Hard to say.” Cheng Weilu looked at the screen, stretched her limbs where she stood, then casually patted its smooth metal head. “We still have plenty of energy. Let’s keep looking. We’re not in a hurry anyway.”
Cheng Weilu had been a mechanical engineer working diligently on Earth until she died in a car accident at the age of twenty-seven. When she opened her eyes again, she found herself in this new world.
Humanity’s habitable territory in this new world had expanded to the scale of entire galaxies. Technology was highly advanced, and lifespans had increased several times over.
Thank goodness she could continue living. Whether this was a dream, a fictional microcosmic world, or something else entirely, her mind and body were still under her own control. A vast and complicated new world awaited her exploration, and Cheng Weilu was quite satisfied with everything.
Thus, after a brief period of confusion brought on by the shock of an advanced technological civilization, she quickly accepted reality.
In New Star Calendar Year 211, fifty years had passed since the last space war. Because of that massive internal war within the Alliance fifty years ago, large amounts of space-war debris had spread throughout the galaxy, affecting various flight routes.
After the war, the authorities were busy recuperating and doing their utmost to restore production. They cut military spending on a large scale and encouraged civilian organizations and individuals to use a numbers-based approach to clean up the space debris. As a result, a new profession emerged in the aftermath of the war: space salvagers.
Of course, “space debris” was merely a general term. Space salvagers retrieved almost anything floating in space. To list them in detail, salvaged objects included fighter fragments, spacecraft fragments, robotic bionic corpses and fragments, human corpses and remains, living robotic androids, living humans…
As an ordinary person and an engineer with a background in science and engineering, Cheng Weilu’s only noteworthy talent was her exceptionally stable mental strength.
In this interstellar era, which relied heavily on mental strength to control spaceships and fighter jets, this was an exceptionally advantageous ability.
She was excellent at piloting spaceships, picked up engineering technology quickly, and loved traveling through space. These were things she had only ever seen in science fiction novels back when she was on Earth. Now that they were within reach, it was truly wonderful.
And the greatest advantage of being a space salvager was that they had passage rights to almost all civilian jump points within the galaxy.
This meant that under normal circumstances, she could pilot her spaceship freely through any area of space where civilian jump points were distributed.
The workflow of a space salvager could be simplified into three steps: accept a job, salvage the target, and return it for handover. After completing an order, they received payment and accumulated points and salvager star ratings.
After spending several years in her previous life as an overworked wage slave, Cheng Weilu had been physically and mentally exhausted. A space salvager rarely needed to interact with other people, making it the perfect profession for her.
And so, she drifted through space salvaging for ten years. In the constantly changing ranks of space salvagers, she diligently worked her way into the top few positions on the points leaderboard, becoming one of the rare and highly prized full-star salvagers.
Cheng Weilu pulled up the job listing again and checked its detailed information. This was an old job, one that many space salvagers had accepted and failed. Year after year, the posting had remained in the system pool without being removed.
The reward had also risen steadily over the years, reaching 800,000 star coins.
The job that had stumped so many salvagers looked completely ordinary: salvage a military unmanned reconnaissance vessel that had gone missing on Day 289 of New Star Calendar Year 186. The spaceship’s designation was UMSA119. The star map coordinates of its disappearance would only be provided after accepting the job.
Beneath the listing in the system pool were one salvager comment after another:
“That place is so desolate that there isn’t even the slightest fluctuation in the signals. What was the military even doing sending a search party there? Does this spaceship even exist?”
“Can’t find it at all… I can’t make this money.”
“Ten years. This job is practically an antique by now…”
“Twenty years, and this job is still here.”
“My spaceship almost ran out of energy and left me unable to make it back. Salvagers who accept this job later, watch your energy consumption. (Though the fact that they provide an energy subsidy after you accept the job is pretty decent.)”
Taking these previous experiences as a warning, Cheng Weilu had made thorough preparations before setting out. She had stocked up on three times the necessary amount of energy and gathered every star map she could find in the cloud that might be useful in the target area.
The environment at the edge of the galaxy was harsh, with sparse jump points, and communications could also be affected. She upgraded and optimized every replaceable component and system on her spaceship, practically spending a fortune. The total cost came to 178,500 star coins.
Cheng Weilu had also reported her planned itinerary to a friend who was likewise a space salvager and granted her management access to her personal account. If Cheng Weilu failed to appear by the designated date, her friend would post a missing-person salvage request for her in the system pool.
If Cheng Weilu died in space, the money in her account would be entrusted to her as well.
For the sake of those 800,000 star coins, Cheng Weilu had spent nearly ten days circling around the vicinity of the target coordinates. She had conducted more than ninety scans, yet found no trace of any signal.
Each time she completed a circuit, she doubled the radius of her orbital path. After several days, the spaceship had already reached the edge of the galaxy.
The only planet near the edge of the galaxy within a reasonable distance of her was U2033. Cheng Weilu once again piloted the spaceship back to the original target location, the place where UMSA119 had disappeared.
U2033 was a massive gas giant with no solid surface. It possessed a high-energy magnetic field of its own, and because it was located at the edge of the galaxy, even the nearest stellar light source was unable to illuminate it.
On the main control screen was the immense planet’s deep, dark-blue surface. Quiet and profound, it carried an air of mysterious unknown.
Cheng Weilu stared at U2033’s data. As something occurred to her, she asked, “Xiao Wei, does U2033 have planetary rings?”
“Yes. However, due to the lighting conditions, they are almost impossible to see with the naked eye. U2033’s planetary rings are irregular in shape. There are also two shepherd moons outside the planetary rings, designated FU101 and FU102.”
A sudden thought struck Cheng Weilu. “What is the orbital period of these two shepherd moons?”
“Analyzing data… The period is twenty-five star-calendar years.”
“Calculate the positions of these two shepherd moons on Day 289 of New Star Calendar Year 186.” Cheng Weilu propped her chin up and continued, “Tell me how long it would take these two moons to travel from their current positions to their positions on Day 289 of Year 186.”
“Calculating… Seven star-calendar days, with an error margin of 0.5 star-calendar hours.”
“Xiao Wei, set the spaceship to stationary hovering mode. Resume normal flight mode seven star-calendar days from now.” Cheng Weilu tapped the panel, then added, “Activate the spaceship’s magnetic-field resistance shield and set it to maximum.”
“A Luo, why aren’t we continuing?” the knitting robot asked in confusion.
“Save some energy. We’ll wait for a certain point in the shepherd moons’ cycle. I have a theory.”
Cheng Weilu glanced at the woolen hat in its hands and extended her right index finger. “Robert, we have to wait seven days. How about you knit me a sweater? I’ll pay you 50 star coins.”
Robert also extended its right metal index finger and touched it to hers. “Okay, deal.”
Seven star-calendar days later, robot Robert finished knitting Cheng Weilu a sweater and began working on a crochet project. It had recently become fascinated with classical patterns from ancient Earth and had spent a long time studying them with its metal fingers while looking at a projection panel.
Cheng Weilu had finished reading two modern interstellar romance stories. When she was completely engrossed in the third, a satisfying revenge story about the number-one female pirate in the interstellar era, Xiao Wei’s voice came from the main control system in the ship’s main cabin as it returned to normal flight mode:
“Hundredth signal scan. A universal distress signal has been detected.”
Robert stopped crocheting and let out a surprised “Ah.” “There really is one! A Luo, you’re amazing!”
Cheng Weilu forcibly dragged herself out of the melodramatic story and raised her eyes from the electronic screen. “Decode the signal.”
“Decoding… Decoding complete. Two types of universal signals have been detected: a Level-One system distress signal, with weak signal strength; and a Level-One human distress signal, with weak signal strength.”
A human signal?
There was actually someone in this godforsaken corner of space?
Cheng Weilu was stunned by the news for a moment. Then she remembered the space salvager regulations and immediately issued an order.
“Pinpoint the location.”
One of the space salvager regulations: living humans take priority. Human distress signals must not be ignored once detected.
However, a human signal did not necessarily mean it had been sent by a living human. It was also very common to salvage damaged spaceship or battle armor containing the corpses of humans who had been dead for a long time.
On the holographic image projected into the air, Cheng Weilu saw two flashing points of light scattered within the ribbon-like, gently curved planetary rings. They happened to lie on the line connecting the two slightly brighter shepherd moons on either side of the planetary rings.
“Gravitational anomaly detected. The spaceship is being pulled by gravity and accelerating toward U2033.”
The anomalously strong gravitational force would capture her spaceship, a grain of sand by comparison, and pull it toward the planet. If it entered the planetary rings at high speed and collided with the dense fragments of ice and planetary debris inside, both the spaceship and everyone aboard would be destroyed.
“Activate the reverse thrusters and stabilize our speed. Open the salvage apparatus once we approach the planetary rings.”
Xiao Wei rapidly calculated and adjusted the spaceship’s speed with perfect reliability. The spaceship steadily and slowly approached the location where the signals were being emitted, and more close-range information began to come through.
The system signal was coming from the edge of the planetary rings. Cheng Weilu zoomed in on the main console and discovered a small military vessel. Its main body was still intact, though some components had been smashed apart. It was most likely UMSA119, which had gone missing twenty-five star-calendar years ago and was listed on the bounty.
Cheng Weilu estimated the situation and determined that the salvage would not be particularly difficult.
The other signal, however, was inside U2033’s planetary rings. Amid the fragments of ice and oddly shaped chunks of planetary debris, there was a tiny black dot at the location where the human signal was being emitted.
After zooming in on the main control screen, Cheng Weilu discovered that it was a perfectly intact… hibernation pod?
Which meant that in this dark and silent corner of space, there really was a person drifting out there.
…
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