Chapter 13: Chapter 9 – Killer space locusts, Jazz, normal kids channel, and “Space Blitz”

After we passed by the creepy Husk, we continued our journey through the maze of iron and steel until we reached a long stretch of rooms with sliding doors. In the long hall was the captain I saw earlier.

"Alright, you are the last contestant in this batch. Your temporary deployment room is numbered 414 on the fourth floor. Officer, escort the contestant to his room." - The officer instructed.

"Yes, Captain." - Kelya nodded and turned to me.

"Follow me, Eddy." - She said to me and walked to an elevator.

"Deployment room?" - I asked.

"Yes, deployment room. Click*. It is for strapping yourself against a wall when launching into space." - Kelya explained while clicking the elevator button.

"Hah... But can't you make a giant hull and strap everyone to chairs like an airplane? The acceleration shouldn't create too much mechanical pressure, right?" - I pointed out.

"Possible, but that would mean that the hull has to withstand all the pressure by itself and increases long-term wear and tear. It is better to use a bee-hive structure instead for added support. It also has the benefits of faster deployment, increased safety, and privacy as a bonus." - She said as the elevator arrived.

Fsh* - The door opened.

"Well, I sure get the privacy part." - I said while entering the elevator, remembering when I sat next to the fat sweaty guy, the nagging granny, and the annoying crying baby.

Being inside a private booth always beats THAT.

After Kelya pressed a button, the elevator doors closed and went up.

"So... You said something about a Machine revolt and Terra Prime? Is Terra Prime another name for Holy Terra?" - I couldn't help but ask.

Kelya shook her head.

"No. Terra Prime was devastated during the Machine Revolt, and it is beyond recovery. Holy Terra is not a natural planet. It is a gigantic artificial one forged through harvesting over a hundred stars and constructing a multi-layered corona powered by a star harvester, or what you call a Dyson bubble. The Emperor himself was the chief architect and builder of this grand jewel of the imperium." - She explained with pride.

"Wow... Sounds badass." - I said with amazement.

"And remember that." - Kelya said snappily.

Ding* Fsh*

We exited the elevator, and I followed Kelya to our designated room.

Fsh*

The door automatically opened for us as we entered a narrow room that might cause claustrophobia in some people. There were precisely four seats arranged in a row, with just enough space to stretch your legs. The well-cushioned seats had seatbelts that you would often see astronauts wear and were individually attached to the wall, with a small drink stand on the right(With a bottle(?) with straw included) and a folding rack on the left.

There was even a futuristic-looking 32inch screen inbuilt into the wall.

"Is that a tv?" - I pointed at the screen.

"Yes." - Kelya nodded.

"Are you sure this isn't a passenger plane?" - I said with a weird look.

No matter how I looked at it, this looked like a private booth on a train or plane, perhaps reaching business class.

"Well, you're not exactly wrong. Although it takes less than ten minutes to get to orbit once the flight begins, we sometimes wait for hours until the said flight begins and hours more until disembarkment. We also need to eat, drink and have some form of entertainment. Sometimes, it also doubles as a briefing room."

"Reasonable." - I said and then waited for the girls to enter, but they just looked at me.

"Eh... Aren't you going in?" - I asked awkwardly.

"Aren't you supposed to get dressed? Or do you want to stay in your Spongebob or whatever pajamas?" - Mirah pointed at my pajamas.

"Oh... Yeah, let me just get dressed real quick..."

I just remembered I was carrying a jumpsuit.

Just as I was about to enter the room, Kelya followed me, "Let me help you with that."

"Hah? I can manage..." - I said and turned my head, only to see her vulgar expression.

"... I never thought I would say this to a girl, but can you stop sexually harassing me and give me some space?" - I said, disturbed.LOL. The guy is getting reverse raped here.

"Hey, don't say that! Even if it's true..." - Kelya exclaimed and then mumbled.

"Sigh... Junior commander, please stop creeping Eddy out. I believe Eddy is smart enough to wear a jumpsuit by himself." - Islea said from my left.

"Tch, Cunt Blocker." - Kelya rolled her eyes and cursed.

"Language! Thud*" - Islea reprimanded and elbowed me.

"Ouch! Why did you hit me?!" - I rubbed my sore arm.

"Whoops... Force of habit. Sorry, Eddy." - Islea said embarrassedly.This is gonna be a running gag

"..."

"Note to self; Islea can become spontaneously aggressive for no reason. Keep a wide berth when possible." - I noted in my mind as I took two safe steps to the side.

"Aw, come on! I said I'm sorry!" - Islea got dejected at my silent treatment.

"Hehe, no use talking your way out of this one, Islea." - Mirah laughed on the side.

"Ugh..." - Islea became even gloomier.

Ignoring my three weird bodyguards, I entered the room, closed the door, and started changing my clothes.

I must say that the underwear is very comfortable, and the blue jumpsuit is both elastic and has a nice feel. The shoes were also comfy, even more than my sports shoes back home.

The moment I stepped out of the room, the three girls crowded and checked me out.

"Nice! It fits well. You look markedly more handsome now." - Kelya said appraisingly with some appreciation.

"At least it doesn't look silly anymore." - Mirah said bluntly.

"Passable." - Islea said a single word, which I took as a compliment.

"Hey! I'm not a zoo animal!" - I backed off and snapped at them.

"I don't wanna be rude, but you kinda are..." - Kelya said with a half-amused face.

"Yeah, you don't see an unevolved human every day." - Mirah said innocently yet bluntly.

"Just like in the history logs..." - Islea said while analyzing me.

"Ugh, screw it. What do I do with my clothes?" - I pointed at my used clothes.

"Throw them to that chute over there." - Kelya pointed at what looked like a laundry chute with a sign on top.

"Okay." - I shrugged and went to the opening, opened the chute, and threw the clothes inside.

I walked back and asked, "So when will I get my laundry back?"

"Hah? What laundry?" - Kelya blinked.

"... My clothes. The ones I threw in the laundry just now?" - I said while pointing at the laundry chute.

 "... That's the general garbage chute." - Kelya said with a weird face.

"... Can I get it back?" - I asked with narrowed eyes.

"Er... No? It gets automatically ground to bits..." - She made an even weirder face.

"..."

"Goodbye, Spongebob pajamas." - I gave a few seconds for the now-dead pajamas.

Sighing to myself, I rubbed my tired face and asked, "Can we just go in?"

"Ah, yeah, sure." - Kelya said and stared at me.

The other two girls also stared at me.

"... Why are you staring at me? Aren't you going in?" - I asked, not understanding why they were not entering.

"We are your bodyguards now, Eddy. Although I would also like our seating arrangement to be different, you need to sit at the very back, while I need to sit at the very front."

"Yeah, let your three meatshields stay in front." - Mirah said half-jokingly.

"Men first." - Islea also joked and lightly bowed while gesturing at the door.

"..."

My inner chauvinist wanted to retort to that last line, but I held myself back and begrudgingly entered the room and sat on the last seat.

Islea followed behind me, followed by Mirah, and lastly, Kelya sat by the door.This is actually standard

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I noticed that Islea and Mirah took their guns and helmets and placed them under their seats on a holder.

"They even have holders?" - I pointed.

"What do you want us to do? Hold them during launch?" - Islea asked back.

"... Touche." - I said in defeat.

"Touch what?" - Islea blinked her emerald eyes at me.

"Hah? Oh, right. It's a saying in French. It means I conceded, and you win the debate." - I explained.

"Ah, I see. Try and avoid using mixed language sayings. My translator can get confused." - Islea said while tapping her earpiece.

"Yeah, sounds about right." - I nodded in understanding.

I sat down and waited a bit before asking, "So what now?"

"We wait. Want to watch some tv in the meantime? It will likely take a few more hours until launch." - Mirah asked and pulled a remote control from under the chair.

"Hah, alien TV. I don't see that every day. What's on?" - I asked with interest.

"Vrax Empire TV, not alien. Big difference. In any case, we have the news channel, the theological channel, the music channel, the educational channel, the sports channel--" - Mirah listed.

"Sports channel?! Sure, show me. I wanna see it for myself." - I immediately cut her and said excitedly.

I was interested in seeing what kind of sports did the aliens have.

"Well, you're the boss." - Mirah shrugged and turned on the tv.

The tv immediately turned on and-- was on a blue screen.

"Ah, it's on the outside connection display. Lemme fix that real quick-- there we go." - Mirah pressed a button on the remote the screen switched to what appeared to be a news forecast.

I saw two edited humans so beautiful that I couldn't imagine them NOT photoshopped. Even the officers from before were not as unrealistically beautiful as they were. I couldn't even see them as human anymore. It was eerie. It was like seeing those edited pictures on the internet in real life.

"Are those real people?" - I pointed with squinted eyes at the super giga-chad and the super barbie on the screen.

"Yeah?" - Mirah turned to me and said with a raised eyebrow as if I asked something stupid.

"But how are they so beautiful, so... Perfect? It just looks unnatural..." - I squinted my eyes at the screen.

It wasn't even about their skin anymore. It was the very structure of the bodies and faces.

The man was an Asian-looking guy with a pale-white face, the type I usually saw on edited photos. He looked like a muscular Asian gigolo that went through excessive photoshop. As for the woman, she looked like those stacked brunette models you see on the internet that you later see remove the mask, only to reveal a hideous face.

If the three girls sitting next to me were at the level of a school belle, then the humans on display were just synthetic, beyond human ability. It just wasn't real.

Even if I tried imagining myself sleeping with the woman on the screen, I think I would puke. Not out of disgust but surrealness.

"Ah, that. Yeah. These are 2nd or 3rd-generation pure-bred galactic noble descendants. Those guys are beyond-perfect humans, and comparison will just hurt you. It doesn't help that they are also using some light makeup."

"Eh... Is every news channel like this?" - I pointed out.

"What? Of course not! It is the galactic news channel, broadcasting from holy terra itself, not some local planetary channel. Galactic noble descendants are super rare, you know. There are only a few million of them combined! They won't lower themselves as some ordinary planets newscaster. They usually run galactic-scale companies, lead scientists, high-ranking military personnel, senators, and planetary rulers. They are the elite society of humanity." - Mirah explained.

"Ah... That makes some sense." - I said as I listened to the news I didn't understand.

On the screen, they displayed some asteroids and what appeared to be their flight course, and then they switched to what appeared to be a battlefield with some monstrous-looking alien bug/spider things with pointy appendages charging at a trench line firing lasers.

"What the heck are those things?" - I asked with squinted eyes.

"One of the ten worst species and pests in the known universe, the Zekzod, but most people call them the swarm or space locusts since they eat all the precious resources on a planet, including biomass, before moving on to the next, turning the world into a useless bedrock. Either they succeed and steal a planet's resources and multiply and spread, or they fail and leave a pile of useless corpses that we need to invest time and effort to carry, recycle, and reinvest back into the drained worlds. Once they make planetfall, they will wreak serious havoc, and this is also why we usually stop them at fringe worlds, or better yet, in space."

Islea explained.

"That's horrible! How do you fight those things?!" - I asked while staring at the tv.

"The Zekzod has three primary weaknesses. The first one is that they can't produce anything by themselves. They rely on invading and stripping down a planet like bandits before leaving, and they can't self-sustain from harvested energy from the sun. The second is their over-reliance on hivemind control. If you take down the leader, they are like headless snakes. They might even resort to cannibalism until self-destruction. The third is that they are blocked by the Emperor's light and cannot travel inside the warp in our galaxy, and they can only resort to traveling through the cold of space. Naturally, they are also susceptible to some carbon-based lifeform weaknesses, such as plasma, laser, and kinetic weaponry."

"Wait, doesn't that make them sitting ducks?" - I asked with a weird look.

If they are immobile, then a response team can track and kill them pretty easily. Even a strategic novice like me knows such basic things.

"Yes, and this is why they usually attack fringe worlds. But sometimes we need to deal with some of our other enemies, so some might use stealth techniques to go under the radar." - Islea explained.

I nodded and then watched the screen. However, the pictures soon changed to alien statistics that I didn't understand.

"Please change the channel." - I asked Mirah.

"Okay, Boss." - Mirah nodded and changed the channel.

It was now on a channel with a man in robes preaching about something, reading from a sort of scroll.

"Theological channel?" - I pointed, half-sure of myself.

"Theological channel. Want me to keep it?" - She asked a rhetorical question.

"Do I look like the religious type to you?" - I asked back.

"I'll take that as a no." - Mirah replied and changed the channel again.

This time, what I saw and heard was--

"Jazz?" - I asked with a weird face.

There was a live performance on a futuristic stage, with around a dozen edited people on the stage, each holding a different musical instrument that looked similar to those on earth, and there was also a choir of eight on the side, copying the sound of instruments.

Of all the music types I imagined the super-advanced and murderous Vrax empire to favor, they liked something as relaxing and soothing as Jazz. The more you know.

"This is because it is the galactic news channel. The Emperor once said that his favorite music is Jazz, so the official music of the Vrax Empire is Jazz." -Kelya said from the far right.

"..."

"Hah... Sounds like a guy I would like to have a drink with... If he wasn't a sociopathic egomaniac tyrant."

"So, want me to keep it on this channel?" - Mirah asked.

"Nah, change it. I had my fill of jazz music on earth."

"As the boss commands." - Mirah sarcastically said while changing the channel.

This time, the channel changed to what looked like a--

"Toddler channel?" - I made a weird face, as what I saw was a surprisingly cheerful educational channel teaching little kids about letters and numbers.

"What? Did you think it would be some sick murder channel that teaches kids how to murder?" - Mirah snickered.

"Eh... Sorta?" - I said with an uncertain face.

"Eddy, this is the Galactic channel base, not a specific militant world channel base. In the Imperium, we teach according to a need-to-know basis. In a Megapolis or Industrial world, they teach you your assigned trade, but they won't have access to the unnecessary survival knowledge of a dangerous world. Similarly, a citizen living in a dangerous world will learn how to survive in his environment before learning anything else that is relevant to them. A citizen living in an Agri-world will only know how to till the land for the rest of his life. Only in civilized and paradise worlds is it allowed to freely learn new knowledge without much restraint of necessity, and Holy Terra is one of them." - Kelya patiently explained.

"Hah... Well, that honestly sounds practical and productive." - I nodded.

"So, want me to stick with this channel, little Eddy?" - Mirah said teasingly.

"Oh, ha, ha. Very funny. Please just switch the channel to the sports channel, I want to see what kind of sports games you have." - I rolled my eyes and said.

"Alright. I'm sure you will have a load of surprises from this one... Hehe..." - Mirah said in a foreboding tone.

I suddenly had a bad feeling about this. I thought for a moment that I would see murder for sports.

The channel once again changed, but this time I saw something completely ridiculous.

A giant arena sphere filled with floating cubicle obstacles and people wearing jumpsuits and helmets jumping and floating around the said obstacles, tackling each other, throwing and kicking multiple balls at one another, and trying to score a goal in some sort of floating loop.

"... What the heck is this?!" - I asked with squinted eyes.

"Space Blitz! Surprised?! Shocked even?!" - Mirah turned to me and tried to gauge my expression with her feline eyes.

"...Yeah, I'm shocked." - I said while blinking and staring at the screen, my jaw slightly slack.

I saw similar things in some sci-fi movies, but I never thought I would see something like this.

Although I kind of hated ball games, this is something I can relate to. This is physics manifest into a game.

"Well? Well? Do you like it? Better than your planets sports?" - Mirah said playfully.

"... Well, there certainly isn't room for comparison. Literally." - I could only say.

Comparing the two is just not fair. There was no room for comparison. My planet's gravity-based games and their gravity-less-based games were in two whole different dimensions.

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