Under the intense barrage of fire, the chaotic swarm of aircraft that had been flying wildly over the base quickly scattered to avoid the shells. Even so, more than a dozen fighter jets were hit and crashed to the ground.
There was no one inside the fighter jets controlled by Li Xu, so it did not matter if they were blown up. But each fighter jet in the supporting formation carried two pilots. Some of the fighter jets that were hit ejected small escape pods, while others exploded before their pilots even had time to react.
The shells falling from the sky and the damaged fighter jets crashed into the spaceships that had originally been parked on the platform. For a moment, the entire platform was filled with the flames and fragments of wreckage from the explosions.
Cheng Weilu had no grudge against the Alliance military. She had never expected things to develop to this point.
But everything happening before her eyes was indeed very much in keeping with Arvid’s style.
Li Xu said nothing. He rapidly flew away from the concentrated fire zone while climbing at full speed, leading the fighter jets under his control into the high-altitude region.
The battleship firing from below was enormous. It had not even cleared the weapons bay yet, and its takeoff and maneuverability were inferior to those of the smaller fighter jets. During the thirty-second braking and cooldown period, Arvid ordered the battleship out of the bay and regrouped the supporting fighter jets, sending them into the high-altitude region to surround and eliminate the target fighter jet.
Cheng Weilu watched the altitude reading on the display climb rapidly. Behind them, an ever-approaching formation of fighter jets and battleships was closing in. For some reason, she suddenly felt like saying something. Even if it was just to ease the tension a little.
“The military’s fighter jets must be pretty expensive, right?”
Li Xu seemed caught off guard by her seemingly random question. After a moment, he gave a slight nod. “Mm. They’re not cheap.”
It was precisely because of this that the Alliance’s decade-long civil war had left the entire Alliance severely weakened. In the years after the war, they had been working hard on economic recovery, and it was only over the past decade or so that things had finally begun to improve.
Cheng Weilu thought of Xiao Wei and Robert on the platform below and felt rather melancholy. She muttered softly to herself, “My spaceship wasn’t cheap either, even though I’ve had it for several years.”
When she had been taken away by the military for questioning, her spaceship had been parked on the base platform. She had no idea whether it had been destroyed in this exchange of fire.
The display showed that they had already flown far away from the original base. In terms of altitude, they had already left Gray Dove’s atmosphere. Military fighter jets were extremely agile, but their speed was limited in space due to energy constraints. The formation of fighter jets and battleships behind them was already about to catch up.
Li Xu turned to glance at Cheng Weilu. “Next, we’ll split up.”
With that, he pressed something on the control console. Cheng Weilu was just about to speak when the back of her seat suddenly reclined flat. She was pulled into a fully reclined position, and the seat pushed her into a narrow compartment.
There was a mechanical sound, and then she was rapidly ejected.
The entire process took only a few seconds. She had no time to react before her vision went completely dark, and she had no idea where she had been flung.
Amid the continuous background noise of explosions, Li Xu’s steady voice came through the communications channel. “The escape pod’s optical camouflage is active. As long as they don’t get close, they won’t be able to see you. Try connecting to Xiao Wei through the mental network. If you’re close enough, it’ll sense you.”
Cheng Weilu was startled and could not help asking, “Is Xiao Wei all right? Can it take off on its own? When did it take off?”
Li Xu answered each question in turn. “It’s fine. I discussed it with it beforehand, when I drew all the base’s firepower away.”
Cheng Weilu immediately did as he said, then could not help asking again, “What about you?”
“I’ll be fine.”
Li Xu said something else, but it was difficult to make out amid the deafening explosions.
Then the voice in her ear disappeared.
Inside the enclosed space with no view of the outside world, time passed little by little. Cheng Weilu had no idea how far the escape pod had flown. The feeling of being completely out of control made her very uncomfortable. Sure enough, she was the kind of adventurer who would never choose a hibernation pod or an escape pod to flee in.
Just as she had almost prepared herself for the worst, the mental network responded. She connected to Xiao Wei’s signal.
Cheng Weilu tightly closed her eyes, and the full panoramic view from the spaceship appeared in her mind. To her surprise, both the escape pod and the spaceship were floating in Gray Dove’s low orbit, and they were not very far apart.
“I’m ahead of you. I’m using optical camouflage. Locate me through the signal. Activate the thrusters. Accelerate first, then decelerate for docking.” Cheng Weilu issued the command mentally.
Xiao Wei followed her instructions. The spaceship quickly caught up, then decelerated until their relative velocity reached zero before docking. It then opened the retrieval device and pulled her back inside.
They had performed the retrieval mission hundreds or thousands of times already, so their coordination was flawless. The entire process was completed in one smooth sequence. As soon as she entered the spaceship, Xiao Wei opened the escape pod for her from the outside.
Cheng Weilu jumped out and took a deep breath. “Li Xu, I made it.”
No one answered.
Frowning, Cheng Weilu called out several more times. Only after Xiao Wei prompted her did she realize that her communication link with Li Xu had been severed.
She was about to try tracking his signal when something nudged her leg. Robert came over, its mechanical hand pointing toward the main control screen.
“A Luo, looks like we’re going to have trouble.”
On the main control screen was a massive holographic map of Gray Dove. Above the gray-white, colony-like bases, dense clusters of small black dots and blue circles were lighting up one after another. They were the fighter formations and battleships of the Gray Dove bases gathering in the air.
Arvid had probably been driven half-mad by the chaos Li Xu had created. In order to hunt him down, he had actually mobilized the firepower of more than a hundred bases.
“We need to get out of Gray Dove’s range as quickly as possible,” Xiao Wei suggested.
This civilian salvage ship had no firepower capable of standing up against military fighter jets and battleships.
Cheng Weilu looked at the nearby Baicheng Star and thought that Li Xu would probably want to return there. But the area was protected by the impregnable Aegis Fortress and the heavily armed Pearl Ring. With Cheng Weilu’s identity, there was no way she could get in.
Cheng Weilu fell silent for a moment before steeling herself. “Go to the G103 jump point platform.”
This was the place where she had originally planned to drop Li Xu off. She would wait for him here. If he did not come, she would leave.
This was all she could do.
Xiao Wei immediately activated the navigation program. At the same time, Cheng Weilu started the spaceship’s self-diagnostic program in the background. The spaceship had been hit several times by stray fire when the base’s battleships had concentrated their attacks on them just now, but only the exterior had been damaged. The main modules were all fine.
More importantly, the spaceship’s protective shield had remained active the entire time.
“Li Xu reminded you to turn it on?” Cheng Weilu asked suspiciously. “When?”
“After you were detained by the military and they finished inspecting the spaceship,” Xiao Wei said.
Robert added, “Li Xu knocked out a guard and then changed into his clothes.”
Cheng Weilu remembered the soldier who had looked back. So that was when he had infiltrated the base. “What about the guard? Is he still alive?”
Robert said, “Alive. While the base was shut down, I carried him out. It’s my first time doing something like this. Pretty exciting, hehe.”
“……”
Fortunately, she had made ample preparations when she was looking for the reconnaissance vessel. Even after everything they had been through, the spaceship still had plenty of energy remaining. Cheng Weilu had Xiao Wei push the thrusters to maximum and fly away from the vicinity of Gray Dove at full speed.
Gray Dove was being thrown into utter chaos, but the space lanes remained calm and peaceful. Under automatic control, Xiao Wei quickly reached the G103 jump point platform.
When she connected to the platform center, Cheng Weilu was still somewhat nervous. In the end, the platform authorization was approved, and she breathed a sigh of relief.
It seemed Arvid’s side had not yet had time to report her identity. Otherwise, all her civilian jump point access privileges would have been revoked, and she would have been arrested the moment she appeared.
There were not many spaceships waiting in line, so she smoothly entered the platform’s jump waiting area.
Robert came over again and rubbed against her leg. “Will Li Xu come?”
“I don’t know.”
Robert looked somewhat dejected. “I even made him a new set of pajamas.”
“……”
Cheng Weilu stared at the clusters of pale blue-white nebulae outside the porthole and carefully thought back to what Li Xu had said before their communication was cut off.
He had said, “I hope we’ll meet again.”
Just “hope,” not “we definitely will.”
He was firmly convinced that nothing would happen to him, but he was uncertain whether the two of them would meet again.
In other words, Cheng Weilu abandoning him and escaping on her own was also within his expectations.
“He will.” Cheng Weilu stroked Robert’s head twice. “But remember to charge him for the pajamas.”
“Warning! An unidentified attack is approaching! All spaceships in the waiting area, please initiate your jump and leave immediately. Repeat, please leave immediately!”
The warning transmitted by the platform center brought Cheng Weilu back to her senses. She watched as the other spaceships waiting in line jumped into the jump point one after another after receiving the warning, disappearing from sight.
Outside the porthole, the glow of explosions was visibly approaching.
They were here.
…
“Keep firing!”
Arvid watched the fighter jet fleeing rapidly ahead. This woman disguised as a salvager was unbelievably difficult to deal with. Her fighter-piloting skills were so strong that none of the pilots at the entire base could catch her. Not only could she control hundreds of fighter jets by herself, she could also maneuver them to launch attacks, defend, and change formation patterns.
She was extremely familiar with the base and could even alter the commands of the backend defense system. The Alliance military’s defense system commands were extremely complicated. Because Arvid’s innate mental strength was limited, he had not used the system currently standard throughout the Alliance military. Instead, he had copied the configuration of Mountain River Base from back then, using a dual-firewall system combining mental-force encryption with key commands.
As for the upper limit of mental strength, of course, it used that person’s. No one in the entire Alliance could possibly have a higher value than him.
Yet this woman who had suddenly appeared had effortlessly broken through the firewall and altered the system commands.
Who exactly was she?
Arvid had assembled every fighter and battleship available and chased around half the planet of Gray Dove, finally shooting down all the controlled fighter jets. Yet he still allowed the last one to escape into space.
“Commander, the G103 jump point platform is ahead. We may cause collateral damage,” the operator warned.
“Send them a notification and tell them to get out of the way. Keep firing!”
He no longer cared whether she could be captured alive. He only wanted to shoot down this fighter jet. He absolutely could not let her escape.
The G103 jump platform was directly ahead.
But without transit authorization, the fighter jet could not enter the jump waiting area. Li Xu looked at the energy reserves, which were almost depleted. His expression remained calm as he flew straight toward the circular gate.
Li Xu shut down the fighter’s protective shield. In the next instant, the fighter jet slammed into the gate.
Then the dense barrage of shells arriving from behind struck both the gate and the fighter jet, erupting into a massive explosion.
Arvid looked at the fighter jet that had been hit on the screen and the jump point not far away, suddenly feeling that the scene looked strangely familiar.
“Target hit. Cease fire.”
He narrowed his eyes, raised his chin, and gave a cold snort. Victory still belonged to him.
─────── ✦ · ˚ ✧ · ˚ ✦ ───────
As the massive flames from the explosion spread, Cheng Weilu quickly maneuvered the spaceship closer to the jump point. If she did not leave now, she might be caught in the blast and blown to ashes right here.
Before entering the jump space, Cheng Weilu suddenly spotted a small white dot being ejected from the site of the explosion on the display.
Reacting quickly, she immediately opened the retrieval device and began slowing the spaceship.
At this point, half the spaceship had already entered the jump space. The sudden deceleration caused violent vibrations throughout the spaceship due to the unstable space. Xiao Wei’s warning rang out.
“A Luo, you can’t open the retrieval device during a jump!”
Cheng Weilu stared intently at the white dot on the screen. As it approached, she waited until it entered retrieval range, then captured it precisely and pulled it back into the cabin before shutting off the deceleration system. The entire operation was completed in one smooth sequence.
Immediately afterward, the entire spaceship slid into the jump space, activated the jump, and left the G103 platform.
Inside the cargo hold, Cheng Weilu helped up the person she had retrieved, who was wearing a silver-white combat uniform. She yanked off the helmet, revealing Li Xu’s pale face.
Air from inside the spaceship was suddenly drawn into his lungs. Li Xu coughed and struggled to breathe, looking as though he were about to collapse. Leaning against Cheng Weilu’s shoulder, he gulped down air while looking at her clean, delicate profile.
The combat suit’s helmet had almost no air reserves. If she had been even a little later, he would have suffocated to death.
When the explosion happened, Li Xu had not felt particularly emotional. He had expected to be ejected. He had also expected to be pulled by the gravitational force of the jump space. But he had not been completely certain that he could time everything perfectly enough to enter the jump point and escape safely.
For example, fifty years ago, he had failed.
But this time, every moment had been timed perfectly.
Because of the person before him, because she had actually waited here for him.
Li Xu thought that this was the second time. If Cheng Weilu had not retrieved him, he would have died silently in that cold, desolate planetary ring.
Robert came over, pressed its mechanical hands together, and turned toward Cheng Weilu with two pink heart-shaped eyes.
“A Luo, you’re so cool!”
Cheng Weilu smiled. “You have to trust a fisherman’s skills.”
Robert then turned toward Li Xu and showed him two pink heart-shaped eyes as well.
“Li Xu, you’re so cool too!”
Li Xu’s lips curved into a faint smile. “Thank you.”
Robert was determined to play the mood-maker to the very end. It raised its mechanical head and showed the cabin two more heart-shaped eyes.
“Xiao Wei, you’re so cool too!”
Xiao Wei’s calm, gentle mechanical voice responded, “Thank you. We’re all very cool.”
…
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