Chapter 2: 2

 

Draft
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 ...

"Lin... Lin... wake up... Lin!"

"Ugh..."

"Lin Xi!"

Lin Xi finally broke free from the dark and heavy sleep. He opened his eyes, everything was blurred, but he could still see through the double visions and the constant humming in his brain, he could still see that the man next him in the sleeping cabin was in a particularly bad situation at this time.

"Bryce?"

Lin Xi asked mumblingly.

It wasn't until he opened his mouth that he realized that besides his brain, his throat was also hoarse, like it had just been rubbed with sandpaper. With the vibration of his vocal cords, Lin Xi's throat burst into liquid that tasted like rust.

The underside of his nose was sticky and wet.

Lin Xi wiped his nose, and was not surprised to see bright red blood on his fingers.

To make matters worse, when Lin Xi tried to recall what happened, there was only a blank in his mind.

No, maybe it's not really blank.

Lin Xi still remembered countless noisy beeps and warnings, all finally converging into a roar, and then... shock...

All compassing pain.

"Damn it... what happened... what..."

In addition to the pain, there was also an indescribable feeling of nausea and dizziness, discomfort dragged back from the realm of dreams.

The edge of the broken sleeping cabin cut his palm, but the numbness of his body made it difficult for him to even feel the tingling pain.

"Take it easy, buddy," Bryce noticed Lin Xi's movements, he stretched out a hand and shook it in front of Lin Xi, "... There was a problem with the jump, remember?"

With the help of Bryce, Lin Xi climbed out of the sleeping cabin.

His body was limp and weak, no matter how turbulent it was, he was lying in the sleeping cabin when it happened, the sequela of the violent interruption from cryogenic sleep dragged him like an invisible whip.

"Sith hasn't given us any orders. The only thing we know now is that Helios didn't jump where we wanted it to."

Bryce whispered in Lin Xi's ear, and the latter could only weakly lean against the obviously damaged sleeping cabin, half-sitting on the floor.

Bryce's voice almost sounded like an echo.

Lin Xi looked around him. The pale green emergency lights shrouded the cabin ominously, the metal floor and walls evidenced the oldness of this spaceship's facilities. There were ten sleeping cabin placed side by side in the cabin, and now those transparent shells have either been opened or broken.

There were bloodstains next to several cabins.

The ventilation system had failed, the air was filled with the unpleasant smell of something burnt, and the anti-shock gel congealed on the ground, making an unpleasant yellow-brown color.

The beeping siren made Lynch's headache and nausea worse.

Warning— coordinates— coordinate failure— transition process terminated— warning— could not be terminated—

He was in a trance, and there seemed to be a series of persistently indifferent mechanical sounds digging into his ears.

"Hmm..."

Lin Mao grabbed his head violently, after taking a few deep breaths, he realized that it was just an auditory hallucination.

Bryce worriedly knelt besides Lin Xi, injecting him with a tube of medicine.

Lin Xi snorted, feeling the cold medicine gradually spreading in his veins.

After a dozen seconds, his condition finally stabilized, and his memory and cognitive abilities that were as thick as fog before finally, slowly, recovered.

When Lin Xi finally realized what happened, he couldn't tell whether it was better to be sober or continue being muddleheaded.

The Helios he was on was a Zeus-class space exploration and scientific research ship, with a total length of 1.8 kilometers, equipped with  five-meter-thick outer walls composed of more than 300 different materials and two ion engines provided by Anya. This scientific research ship was a product left over from the era of great exploration. Whether in shape or volume, it strongly embodied the fads of that time. Yes, this Helios could be called a colossus on Earth... However, compared to the vast universe, this huge spaceship was as small as a speck of dust.

A failed transition often means the loss and confusion of coordinates. God knows how much work they'll have to do just to find their way back to Earth.

Thinking of this, it's not hard for Lin Xi to understand why Bryce's face looked so bad.

On the way to the emergency room, Lin Xi joined the other crew members, Bryce kept nagging uncontrollably.

"... It's my fault. If it wasn't for me, you would still be on Earth, safely and sound as a teacher. You really shouldn't have followed me to this dead spaceship, full of lunatics jumping to waste your life." The situation in the corridors of the spaceship was much better than that in the cabin, at least, the lighting facilities were still in operation, Lin Xi turned his head and glanced at Bryce, he noticed that the latter's pupils trembling slightly due to extreme tension.

"Look at what these people are doing, damn it, now you're stuck like me—"

"Calm down, man," Lin Xi sighed, squeezing Bryce's shoulder hard, "You're talking like you're responsible for this."

Lin Xi's foster brother was tall and muscular, but only few really knew he had a soft heart and a tendency to... overthink. These qualities made Bryce a perfect brother, Lin Xi hardly encounter any obstacles assimilating into Bryce's family. However, when encountering problems like these, Lin Xi also had to spare his energy to appease the other.

And, to a certain extent, what Bryce said isn't completely without reason. It is indeed because of Bryce that Lin Xi was staying in the Helios spaceship at this time (and enduring mental fatigue, nausea and headaches from concussions and disrupted sleep). 

He wasn't a crew member of the Helios (fortunately, otherwise Lin Xi could be sure that Captain Taran would try his best to throw him out of the ship through a domestic waste discharge port). 

If it hadn't been for that accident, he would still be a leisurely assistant professor of botany in the Earth-Moon Union University, only needing to worry about his possibly receding hairline. 

However, just two years ago, because Bryce participated in a private research project related to the Sunu planet- and this research project needed a reliable "scholar" related to botany- Lin Xi was sent by the dean of the department, who had been displeased with him for a time, packed up and sent to the Helios to participate in this so-called "Earth-Sunu cultural and material exchange project". 

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Of course, everyone knew that this wasn't a shitty privatized project, it's just a material plunder carried out by the government for some reason - in more common terms, smuggling. 

 

The Sunu was located on the edge of Orion, once a very rich and peaceful planet. 

Sunu planet is rich in a special substance "ground milk" that could greatly improve and stimulate the vitality of intelligent creatures, as well as power other handicrafts. It's precisely because of this that the life of the Sunu people was quite prosperous and peaceful, filled with abundant resources. Their appearance was similar to that of human beings, only their technological development is a little behind than that of Earth. 

Combining these various reasons, the relationship between Earth and Sunu has always been quite good... Until a few decades ago. For some completely inexplicable reasons, the group of gentle and leisurely Sunu people suddenly went crazy. It's difficult to understand the behaviors of the Sunu people using human perception, even for the most authoritative Sunu cultural experts recognized by the Earth-Moon Union University.

The Sunu fell into madness in various unimaginable ways, including unreasonable suicide and all kinds of appalling cannibalism. In just a few decades, this group of crazy aliens completely messed up their entire planet. In the past, that is, during the normal period, all kinds of materials were firmly controlled by the Sunu government and would never flow to the outside world— including their most precious ground milk, rare plants, animals, and precious metals. All these, in ways upright and not very so, flowed into the pockets of the Earthlings.

Yes, the Earthlings have expressed regret for the few remaining sane Sunu, but that doesn't mean they'll stop grabbing the few supplies the poor bastards possessed.

...

"Besides, I'd rather stay in the same place with you and face all this than try to teach a group of empty-headed idiots on Earth, all while needlessly worrying about news of a missing spaceship." Lin Xi sincerely expressed, "If you think about it, at least our old man didn't directly break into pieces during the transition fault, but went to a... um... this fucking place..."

When passing by the viewfinder, Lin Xi subconsciously glanced out, then stammered a little because of what he saw.

Completely different from the desolation and silence of his imagination, there were lush creatures filling the surface of this strange place. From the perspective of a human, they even looked like tropical plants.

It's just that the tropical plants on Earth aren't in such huge sizes, or armed with such a gorgeous appearance.

In the gaps between those "things", was a hazy, milky white steam-like mist.

"This should be an unnumbered asteroid. Thankfully, our old man is quite reliable at certain times. I heard that there was an explosion in the warehouse area, but no matter what, we managed to make an emergency landing." Bryce glanced at the scene outside following Lin Xi's gaze, and then carefully considered his words, "When I came to you, Sith was still comparing star maps, trying to figure out our current location, God bless us, for we didn't deviate too far."

"Who knows..."

Lin Xi withdrew his gaze and muttered absently.

This was a living planet- from the standpoint of the passengers of this forcibly landed spacecraft. This is a good thing, after all, many elements needed for life's survival were somewhat common in the universe.

But for Lin Xi, the moment he saw those things, he felt a layer of goose bumps appear on his body.

He just didn't like the goddamn place for no reason, and he knew it right away.

And in the same way, Talan Ida, the captain of the Helios, obviously had the same idea as Lin Xi. Of course, it wasn't just this strange planet that Talan didn't like, he also didn't like this strange planet. Also all humans, even if those humans were his crew.

When he arrived in the emergency room, Taran was yelling furiously.

"I don't care— someone has to go to the warehouse to check! Damned- do you know how important that sculpture is!"

"It's just a strange fossil..."

"Oh, in your eyes, 'strange' fossils that remain alive and produces 'ground milk' after billions of years is a common thing? I wish you remember that it took us two years, travelling thousands of miles for this thing, even going to the goddamn planet of madmen! And now, it's sitting in the warehouse, and all surveillance has been cut off! Now isn't the time for you scumbags to hide in the safe zone to cry and be lazy! I need to know about it, now! Immediately!"

The moment the metal door smoothly gave way, Lin Xi frowned unhappily when he heard Talan's hoarse screaming.

If he hadn't boarded the Helios, it would be hard for Lin Xi to imagine someone like Talan becoming the captain of a space exploration ship

He should have be calm when encountering ghost problems like the transition failure. Calm, reassuring, and planning to organize the manpower on the ship as quickly as possible for maintenance and self-rescue.

But the man standing in the middle of the room was as irritable and frantic as a wild orangutan robbed of its bananas.

Lin Xi thought that even wild orangutans would react better than Talan. After all, those orangutans wouldn't look as neurotic, crazy, or insane as Talan.

"After forcibly interrupting cryogenic sleep, humans need at least 2 hours to alleviate the sequelae, not to mention that the sub-wave resonance caused by the failure of the transition itself, and the direct impact of the forced landing! The bridge leading to the warehouse has been broken, and it's very dangerous there, at least we can't let them go down until the others recover from the aftereffects..."

The deputy captain Alisa is petite and has a gentle temper. During the two-year voyage, she once acted somehwhat like a lubricant between Taran and the other crew members. However, the gentle aura on her body was gone now, she stood in front of the other surviving crew members with a livid expression, coldly rebutting Taran.

Lin Xi and Bryce's arrival interrupted the feisty dispute.

But at the same time, the moment they walked in, Talan and Alisa's eyes fell on them.

It's just that Talan looked at Lin Xi, while Alisa looked at Bryce. The eyes of the pair behind him stuck together, tender and loving, completely inconsiderate of others, while Talan looked at Lin Xi with gaze as sharp as a poisoned knife.

Lin Xi: "...ahem."

He felt that they came at the wrong time.

"Wow, I'm so happy to see that you're still alive, Captain Taran."

Lin Xi raised his eyebrows and greeted Taran.

Everyone can hear how "I'm so happy" sounded very insincere.

He even sounded regretful.

Taran's eyeballs rolled, and he stared straight at Lin Xi without a word.

He was a very thin man, so thin that Lin Xi even wondered how he passed the health check when boarding the ship. His skin was so white it looked like there was no trace of blood, stretched tightly on his skull, the shape of his bones could almost be made out, making Taran look like some kind of mummified corpse. His eye sockets and two eyeballs revealed a strange and crazy appearance from time to time.

He had to say that when he looked at a person like this, even Lin Xi couldn't help feeling a little antsy.

Lin Xi subconsciously glanced at his brother.

In fact, when he first boarded the ship, Talan wasn't as unstable as he was now. Nobody knew whether it was because the things they're bringing back to Earth for scientific research this time was too precious, or because the things inside Talan's body were too precious. His rumored thinned Sunu blood was at work. In short, every since the ion engines of Helios were activated and the spacecraft left Sunu planet, Talan had become more and more weird and neurotic.

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PastTimer: This is long and I'm excited and exhausted just thinking about it

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