Chapter 100: Battle at the Interstellar Dock (II)

Chapter 100: Battle at the Interstellar Dock (II)

Picking up where the last chapter left off — having dealt with the crocodile-headed merchant, I made my way to the interstellar dock’s scheduling room, hoping to finally learn what these people were after.

The interstellar dock’s scheduling room was the ship-control office for the entire dock. Naturally, it had been the container soldiers’ first target.

Inside, a refined-looking man from Tengshe Star sat directing operations.

He looked up as I approached and said stiffly, “What are you doing back here? Get to your post. The captain’s almost here. If anything goes wrong, you’ll answer for it.”

“The garrison’s main force is closing in,” I said, “and fighters are on the way too. I need to know how we’re responding.”

“Have you lost your mind?” he snapped. “Isn’t the bomb already in place? Once they arrive, we pull out. Let them all get buried here.”

I put on a look of urgency. “That’s exactly why I came. The bomb might be compromised. I saw someone strange heading that way — not one of ours. I tried to stop him and lost. That’s why I came straight to you.”

That got his attention at last. He stood and looked outside.

Following his gaze, I pointed toward a wrecked ship sitting in the dock’s repair zone. “He’s already inside. Why don’t the two of us go take a look?”

The refined man nodded, muttering, “Troublesome,” then called out to the rest of the scheduling room, “I’m going to check this myself. Guide the captain’s ship in — the moment he lands, we all pull out.”

Then he grabbed me and we left together.

Not knowing where the bomb had actually been placed, I couldn’t afford to walk ahead of him. He, meanwhile, kept urging me faster, insisting time was nearly gone and nothing could go wrong now, of all moments.

I dragged my feet on purpose, muttering that the man I’d seen was dangerously strong — giving myself every excuse to stay a step behind him.

Sure enough, he cursed me for being useless, then shot off at high speed toward the wrecked ship in the repair zone.

By then, the garrison’s vanguard had already arrived and engaged the soldiers in open combat.

The refined man didn’t spare it a glance. He hauled me along, and together we flew straight into the wreck.

Outside, the battle raged. Inside, the silence was almost unnerving.

I pointed deeper into the ship. “That’s probably where the bomb is.”

He let go of me and shot forward at speed. I stayed close behind until the two of us landed near the ship’s nuclear reactor core. Only then did he turn and ask, “Where is he?”

I let my expression go strange and unfamiliar, and smiled.

“You really don’t suspect me at all?”

Only then did he whip around, staring at me in shock. “You? Where’s E Suoluo?”

“Do you even need to ask,” I said. “Why don’t you just tell me what exactly you people are trying to do? Just to destroy HD Star’s transit dock?”

“Who are you?” he demanded. “E Suoluo told me he’d spotted someone suspicious in the restaurant. So that was you. But you don’t look like HD Star. You’re not from Yaomei Star either. You don’t even look like you’re from Cassiopeia. So why are you here?”

“I’m the one asking questions right now,” I said. “Though we could always trade. You tell me, I’ll tell you. Fair enough? If you refuse, I’ll simply wreck your plan myself. I already know where that bomb is. I can throw it straight into open space.”

He studied me for a long moment, clearly weighing whether he could actually take me down. Then he said, “Friend — we don’t have to be enemies. HD Star’s been making military moves lately, and this dock is central to whatever they’re planning. Tengshe Star and HD Star are sworn enemies. Before war breaks out, we have to cripple their infrastructure first.”

“Aren’t you worried this counts as an act of war on its own?” I said. “Detonate that thing, and it’s as good as Tengshe Star declaring war outright. Are you prepared for that?”

“None of the soldiers deployed here belong to Tengshe Star,” he said. “They’re all local pirates. The captain arriving shortly is a well-known pirate leader from this region. Plunder is simply their trade.”

“But the soldiers fighting out there are clearly well trained,” I said. “Nothing like a ragtag band of pirates.”

“Their seas of consciousness are Tengshe Star soldiers, of course,” he said. “The bodies aren’t. Pirate bodies, every one — untraceable. Now it’s your turn. The bomb’s already counting down. You don’t want your soul left behind here with mine, do you?”

“Fine,” I said. “I really am not your enemy — just a passerby, truly. But here’s the complication: I happen to have a connection to someone on HD Star. And I’d like to help him. Understand?”

“Since I’ve already told you our plan,” he said, “you owe me at least where you’re from.”

“Fair’s fair,” I said. “I’m from Bixian Star.”

I drew out the crystal token and gave it a small wave in front of him. I didn’t dare tell him I was from the Blue Planet — I had no way of knowing whether he had some channel to relay this conversation elsewhere, and if he did, it could bring fresh disaster down on Earth. Bixian Star, at least, was already HD Star’s satellite — the enemy’s own territory.

He frowned. “Impossible. I know Bixian Star well. There’s no one like you there.”

I smiled. “The universe is vast, and its creatures endlessly strange. How much of it could you really claim to know?”

Just then, the sound of an approaching ship rang out from outside. His face changed instantly. Without warning, he lunged at me, driving a palm strike at full force, laced with a powerful surge of cosmic force of consciousness.

I had to admit — this man’s strength dwarfed the merchant’s by far. Here, finally, was a real challenge.

I answered with a palm strike of my own, cosmic force of consciousness fused with martial technique.

The two strikes met head-on.

Boom—

We were both hurled back dozens of meters.

In raw palm force, he was no weaker than I was.

Again.

I shifted my cosmic force of consciousness and drove it hard toward his mind.

He struck back with force of consciousness of his own, but it was plainly weaker than mine.

I ground my consciousness down to fine sand and forced it into his skull.

Realizing he couldn’t win that fight, he tried to flee — throwing a martial strike that pushed past even his own limits, which meant emptying his sea of consciousness entirely and pouring every ounce of it into raw technique.

It was a gamble.

He was betting he could knock me clear before my consciousness seized his mind.

I nearly laughed. How different was this from Gao Haipeng, years ago, betting his transformation could beat me in the ring?

I seized control of his sea of consciousness at once. That punch he’d thrown beyond his full strength — I simply redirected it straight into the ship’s hull.

Boom— the titanium-alloy hull of the great ship tore open under his own fist, leaving a hole nearly ten meters wide. Through it, I could see a modest-sized vessel already flying toward the dock, with the scheduling room staff scrambling aboard.

Using cosmic force of consciousness, I wrenched the bomb free from the reactor core in one motion. Then, using the phase-dislocation method, I forced it directly into the refined man’s body.

I carried him at speed toward the waiting ship.

The hatch was already sliding shut as I threw his body through the gap and shouted, “He’s hurt—take him and go, hurry!”

One of the soldiers who’d originally taken the scheduling room called out to me, “E Suoluo, don’t give up! Get up here too!”

I turned back and said, “Take off now — the bomb’s counting down, it’s about to go. I’ll hold the garrison back and keep them from disabling it.”

Then I flew back down to the ground.

The garrison had already pushed close to the wreck. Hearing my shout, the ship didn’t hesitate — it tore off into open space at full speed.

I dropped my disguise and returned to the restaurant.

Fighting still raged outside. The garrison’s fighters had joined the fray by then, and the remaining container soldiers scattered in every direction as the garrison hunted them down.

About ten minutes later, far out in the black, a bright circular flash lit up the sky.

I looked up at that flash in space and thought, That was close.

Had I not wandered into the scheduling room and stumbled onto the truth of that bomb, I’d have been just another casualty of the sabotage — dead for certain.

The fighting wound down quickly after that.

The garrison commander sent for me.

When I met with him, I laid it all out — how I’d learned about the bomb in the scheduling room, how I’d dealt with E Suoluo and the refined Tengshe Star man, how I’d disposed of the bomb, and how they’d managed to separate body and sea of consciousness in the first place.

Truthfully, even without my account, he’d have pieced together the shape of the attack on his own. A nuclear detonation in open space wasn’t something Yaomei Star’s — or HD Star’s — detection systems could possibly miss.

Once I finished, the commander’s expression turned distinctly uneasy. I understood exactly why. If word of everything I’d just told him reached HD Star’s higher command, it would mean serious dereliction of duty on his part — a serious mark against his career prospects. His handling of this battle had been badly flawed, and he knew it.

When I finished, I told him plainly: I was only an outsider. I’d come to Yaomei Star to test my cosmic abilities, and I had no interest in the rest of it. The matter was his to handle from here.

Hearing that, the commander offered his deep thanks for how decisively I’d resolved things, insisting he wanted to record a major commendation in my name. In truth, I’d probably saved his life. Had that bomb actually gone off at the dock, it might well have triggered the nuclear devices aboard the ships, with losses beyond calculation — and given the scale of the battle, he could hardly have avoided being there himself when it happened.

“I’m from the Blue Planet,” I told him. “Recognition means nothing to me. Credit it instead to the soldiers who were wounded or killed.”

With that, I took my leave, intending to return to Bixian Star.

Seeing that I wanted no credit, the commander was quietly relieved — it meant he’d never have to explain to his superiors where such a commendation had come from, and risk exposing his own missteps in the process.

The next day, at the spacecraft dock, preparing to board a ship back to Bixian Star, I found the commander had come himself to see me off. As we said our goodbyes, he quietly passed me a mass of something. I immediately drew out the chakra green jade disk and took the mass inside it.

I didn’t need to look to know what it was — a substantial mass of cosmic energy, the kind that would genuinely help me refine my abilities further. I understood exactly what he was doing: buying my silence, making sure nothing unflattering about him ever reached the wrong ears.

I had to accept it. Only by accepting would he feel any peace of mind. I was, after all, Survey Inspector Xuan’s guest. Not someone he could afford to offend.

When the commander spotted the chakra green jade disk in my hand, curiosity got the better of him. “Is that — the chakra green jade disk? Officer Xuan gave that to you? That’s a supreme treasure. Xuanze himself asked for it once and was refused — he only gave Xuanze the lotus-shaped green jade disk. And he gave this to you? You must mean more to him than his own son.”

I smiled. “Is the chakra green jade disk really better than the lotus-shaped green jade disk? Aren’t they meant to be a pair?”

“A pair, yes,” the commander said, “but there is still a male-female distinction. Men do better with the chakra green jade disk. Women, of course, do better with the lotus-shaped green jade disk. I heard Xuanze already gave the lotus-shaped green jade disk to his girlfriend, Hanming.”

I drew out one green jade token from the lotus-shaped green jade disk, rubbed it gently between my fingers, and tucked it back inside my robe.

The commander turned pale with shock. “You — you have that too?”

I turned back and smiled at him. “Because I’m his little son.”

He sputtered, practically incoherent. “What? Officer Xuan has a little son? How did I not know?”

I didn’t bother answering. I only thanked him for the gift and boarded the ship.

Truth be told, I rather enjoyed the look on his face.

I saw no reason to explain. Let him puzzle it out himself.