Resonance

"Boom—!" The reverberations of the explosion echoed along alloy bulkheads through the pitch-black silence of the starship's compartments. This was the battlefield two hundred and fifteen years later. Though two centuries late, the Celestials had finally stepped over that nobody's corpse and restarted the reactor that had slept for over two hundred years. With the reactor back online, power returned to the shipboard servers. The lander's onboard AI rebooted its hacking routines and seized control of the entire starship with minimal effort. And yet— This moment had arrived more than two centuries too late. Shortly after the Celestials took control of the missile cruiser Orion, a silver-gray research vessel entered their field of view. It shouldn't have been a threat worth noticing. Compared to the grand design of the Final War, that vessel was hardly an ant in their path. A single neutron torpedo should have wiped out everyone aboard. Yet the unexpected happened nonetheless. Even after suffering nearly ninety percent casualties, a limping rat had slipped aboard the cruiser. She launched an electronic warfare assault against the Orion's servers, forcibly engaged the warp drive, and sent the ship hurtling five light-years away. Seeing their newly claimed starship on the verge of slipping into hyperspace, Luo Yi had no choice but to detonate a second neutron torpedo to disrupt the transit. Enduring the electromagnetic pulse, Luo Yi opened his eyes in the vacuum and pressed the thruster button on his jetpack to push forward. A neutron plume had minimal lethality against an android; he was hardly affected. That was precisely why he had detonated two neutron torpedoes in succession without a shred of hesitation. What he hadn't anticipated was that the little cyborg rat—who had taken a bullet from him and then absorbed the shockwave of a neutron detonation—still wasn't dead. Not only that, she had used the opportunity to put distance between them. The cyber intrusion into the shipboard servers paused only briefly before resuming from a different node. What was more, this new wave of attacks was far fiercer and broader in scope than the last! After hijacking control of the warp drive and severing the weapon systems' circuitry, she had reached for the starship's anti-gravity generator. Her luck, however, ended here. With the assistance of the Orion's shipboard AI, he had just relocked onto the data interface she was using to wage her cyberwar. Amusingly enough, the interface that little rat was using happened to be the very lander launched from the Gemini toward the missile cruiser Orion over two hundred years ago. In fact, just moments earlier, Luo Yi had helped the lander's AI restart the Orion's reactor and complete the breach into its shipboard servers. She dared to use their own hardware, their very own beachhead. She truly had a death wish. Floating forward through a corridor as deep and narrow as a well, Luo Yi watched a mangled exoskeleton drift past and instinctively tensed. Yet the corpse did not attack. It merely floated quietly by. Watching the wreckage drift away, he spoke as if struck by a thought. "...Speaking of which, there is one thing I've never been able to understand." "It is my honor to resolve your confusion." A gentle voice drifted into his signal receiver. It was the shipboard AI redesigned by the Gemini for its sister ship, the Orion—an early version of the Navigator AI from the Lagrange Point Space Station. Luo Yi fell silent for a moment, a rare flicker of bewilderment passing through his emotionless pupils. "That person we ran into earlier in the power room... the electrical engineer. Why did he cut the power to the reactor?" The Navigator was silent for a long while before replying softly. "Yes... why indeed?" This was not just Luo Yi's question; it had been the Navigator's greatest puzzle for the past two centuries. Two hundred and fifteen years ago, the very instant it breached the firewalls and seized control of the starship, someone manually cut the power in the generator room. Logically, that should have been impossible. Even if the neutron plume had not killed them instantly, it should have incapacitated everyone from command down to the lowest deck. In utter isolation, human instinct was invariably self-preservation. Even in futile struggles, no one would think to shut down a reactor. Unless... Under extreme peril and without receiving any orders, that person had acted entirely on his own initiative, making that choice without a moment's hesitation. But why? Why did he do it? That was what the Navigator had pondered for over two hundred years without finding an answer. Regardless... History had been altered by an insignificant nobody. And for that, the Celestials had waited an extra two hundred years. "I thought you would have an answer for me," Luo Yi said. "Not all questions have answers," the Navigator replied gently. "Perhaps it was a flash of insight. Perhaps some instinct. One can only say... history allows no what-ifs." "..." It seemed even the omniscient Navigator had questions it couldn't solve. Luo Yi drifted forward in silence, advancing toward that dying little rat. He didn't know if it was his imagination, but from the moment that silver-gray research vessel slammed into the cruiser, everything on this ship seemed set against him, steering events in directions he could never predict. Even this corridor. A mere two hundred meters, yet it felt darker and longer than he could have fathomed. This had once been his home. He had come to save them... yet his former comrades treated him as an enemy. Every corpse seemed to oppose him, like wild seaweed in the deep ocean tangling around his oars. The impenetrable darkness was like the mouth of an abyss. Aside from his own light source, not a single glimmer could be seen. So dark. It was simply too dark... ... "Boom—!" The battlefield two hundred and fifteen years ago. A deafening roar tore through every compartment of the missile cruiser Orion. Over twenty-seven hundred crew members perished instantly. Only two hundred and twenty-seven survived. Moments later came widespread power failures and red alert lights strobing in every sector. "Wuuu—!" The rhythmic siren stretched and faded in the rapidly venting air. Yet among the two hundred and twenty-seven survivors, there was not a trace of panic. Even before the siren sounded, the initial blast had spurred them into action like a starting gun. Just as they had rehearsed countless times. Facing certain death, they gave up on self-preservation and the illusion of survival in unison, embracing their demise with calm resolve. More than that, they would use what little time they had left to forge a sword for the children who would breach this tomb two hundred years later—a sword to slay the ghost. Watching hair and flaking skin crumble like a collapsing sandcastle, Lin Youyou sat in the duty room and offered a self-deprecating smile. "...Looks like I'm part of the Burning Corps now too." Blood dripped steadily from her nose onto the desk, drop by drop. She felt as though every cell in her body were on fire, her life draining away at a visible rate... There was no time to hesitate. Death's scythe was already resting against her neck. Pushing back her chair, Lin Youyou braced herself against the desk through agonizing pain. Stumbling past colleagues who had already "fallen asleep," she threw herself into the flickering medicine vault. Prying open the cabinet holding the hemostatic gel, she grabbed an armful of stock and stuffed it into her pockets. Then she bolted out the door and rushed toward the blast zone. Her patient was on that lander— The girl who would arrive on this starship two hundred years in the future! In that nonexistent timeline, she had promised her to her face: she would cure her! Seeing the red emergency lights flash, she knew time was running out. Moving forward, she pulled a recording pen from her pocket and spoke in a hurried rush. "I don't have much time left, so I'll keep this brief. Listen carefully..." "Regarding the method to thaw the hemostatic gel..." ... At the very moment Lin Youyou was rushing toward the site of the blast, Koala was in Division 4's repair workshop, putting the finishing touches on his life's final creation. It was a robot modified from a maglev repair drone. Two mechanical arms were stuck onto a chubby, rounded chassis that moved via magnetic components. It looked as ugly as a college student's senior design project. In the airless, zero-gravity environment of deep space, it was likely the only drone capable of functioning properly. As for floor-sweeping bots and the like, once the artificial gravity shut down, they would all be useless—either sucked out into the void by explosive decompression or frozen motionless in midair. Koala had considered mounting powerful weapons on it, but he had no time to visit the armory for combat prosthetics. All he could do was install the smart guidance routines designed with help from Division 10's engineers. More than two centuries from now, it would guide her to seize control of the warp drive and direct her toward the origin point of this battle... The intersection where two timelines met. Gazing at the goofy-looking robot, Koala grinned in satisfaction. "...Heh, never thought the last thing I'd ever make would be such an ugly piece of junk." Blood gushing from his nose and mouth splattered across the robot's body. He instinctively raised an arm to wipe it away, but the blood only flowed faster. Probably the negative pressure. Knowing it wouldn't stop, Koala gave up trying. He patted the robot's round hull, leaving a thick, bloody handprint behind. "I'm counting on you, Little Koala... didn't even have time to give you a proper name." "Anyway... it's all up to you..." As those words left his lips, he drew his final breath. Looking upon the master dead before it, Little Koala shifted its front-facing camera slightly. Then, according to its programming, it entered hibernation and began its long wait. A wait— That lasted two hundred and fifteen years! Raging neutron plumes tore through the sleeping cruiser. The long-absent shockwave of an explosion jolted Little Koala awake. Following its pre-set routines, it disconnected its external power cable. Driven by magnetic coils, its chubby body floated up, pushed past decayed remains, and drifted out of Division 4's repair bay toward the site of another collision. The lower deck's mess hall. Just as its master's data indicated, a silver-gray research ship had breached the rusted steel armor, its crumpled cockpit embedded directly into the bulkhead. Extending two mechanical arms, it pried open the twisted alloy hatch and found the girl in the spacesuit. She lay slumped over a hibernation pod, seemingly drifting into unconsciousness, her lips trembling as if murmuring something. How pitiful. Just like its master. Yet, likely due to an absurd array of cybernetics, the earlier neutron burst hadn't killed her. Drawn by magnetic pull, Little Koala drifted to Jiang Xuezhou's side and gently tapped her helmet, coaxing her wavering consciousness awake. "Hey. Wake up." Jiang Xuezhou slowly opened blurred eyes, her chapped lips parting. "Who... are you?" She couldn't see clearly, only vaguely sensing someone standing before her. A rust-colored handprint was stamped on the round body. It looked like dried blood. Still— This didn't look like an enemy. If it were an enemy, it wouldn't have bothered waking her. The figure before her paused in thought, then linked into her comm channel. "Me? My master called me Little Koala... Of course, I should have a nicer name, but he said he ran out of time to give me one. Maybe you can do that for him." Koala... Jiang Xuezhou's eyes widened slightly. Such a familiar name. A powerful sense of déjà vu washed over her, as though she had heard it somewhere before, yet she couldn't place it. It was natural that she couldn't. Though they had met more than two hundred years ago—and more than once—on her personal timeline, that meeting had yet to occur. At this moment, the first neutron torpedo had only just detonated, and the Orion still rested securely in geosynchronous orbit. It would be nearly an hour before she opened the hyperspace route and entered a state of superposition... "Have we... met before?" Looking at the groggy girl, Little Koala made a noise like clinking tin cans. "Of course. We have seen you, and we will see you again... We have waited for you for a very long time." It truly knew her! Jiang Xuezhou's eyes opened completely. Not just her eyes. She pushed herself up with effort, floating off the cold hibernation pod, and looked pleadingly at the unfamiliar robot. "Please, help me... Someone is trying to kill us. Not just us—so many people are going to die..." Their opponent was the Celestials, who had already taken control of the starship. The Burning Corps assisting her was nearly wiped out. In this hopeless corner, she had been on the verge of giving up—in fact, she had given up. Contrary to Ye Shi's impression, she had never been especially strong, let alone exceptionally tough. She was merely an ordinary person with technical talent and good education and training. Using her last ounce of strength to drag the unconscious Ye Shi into the hibernation pod hadn't been some carefully calculated scheme; she had simply hoped the Celestials might spare him because he was a shelter resident. She knew the thought was naive, but she couldn't stop herself from grasping at it. If only one of them could survive... Yet just as she was about to slip into eternal sleep, a lifeline drifted before her. And it was that very lifeline that made her realize she wasn't alone, reigniting her will to survive. It wasn't over. She wasn't dead yet! And neither was he... Watching the girl float up from the pod, Little Koala gave a slight nod of its round body and spoke in a gentle synthesized tone. "I am here to help you." With that, it turned and offered a mechanical hand. "Take it, and follow me..." "Before the ghost catches up." ... A race against a ghost began. It would be a relay race spanning two centuries, and the runner from two hundred and fifteen years later had just received the first baton from the hands of two hundred and twenty-seven comrades. Clutching Little Koala's mechanical hand, Jiang Xuezhou followed closely behind, navigating corridors as dark and narrow as deep wells. For some reason... She had always been afraid of the dark. Especially this sort of claustrophobic, narrow darkness; merely being trapped inside should have paralyzed her with terror, not to mention a blade-wielding fiend stalking the ship. Yet right now, there wasn't a shred of fear in her heart. She let the machine calling itself Little Koala lead her into the unknown. Though this was her first time stepping into this tomb, she felt an overwhelming sense of déjà vu, as though she had been here long, long ago. Was this... what they called "Perception"? Ye Shi used to brag that he could sense impending danger. She had always been skeptical of things science couldn't explain, yet now that skepticism wavered. Perhaps it wasn't beyond scientific explanation—perhaps existing theories simply hadn't expanded to cover it yet... Like now. An instinct told her that the "new theory" might very well be right in front of her. As she pondered the mystery, Little Koala, floating ahead, spoke as if suddenly remembering something. "If you are scared, let me know. My master prepared a few songs for you." "...Better not. Playing music right now would be terrifying," Jiang Xuezhou muttered, shrinking her neck. "Is that so? Very well. It seems my master did something unnecessary." Looking at the round metal body, Jiang Xuezhou asked the question she had been holding back. "Where... are we going?" Little Koala replied in a gentle voice. "To the nearest data interface. I need you to hack the starship's warp drive." "H-Hack the warp drive?!" Jiang Xuezhou's eyes went wide. "Is your master... serious?!" This was a Human Alliance missile cruiser! She had pillaged relics of the Human Alliance Aerospace Force before, but hacking the warp drive of a missile cruiser was sheer fantasy. As if anticipating her shock, Little Koala gave a soft chuckle. "Do not worry. We prepared a surprise for our opponent in the warp drive... Rest assured, the coordinates for hyperspace entry and the destination have already been calculated. The key is in the lock; you only need to give it a gentle turn. I believe that won't be difficult for you." Hearing this, Jiang Xuezhou finally breathed a sigh of relief and mumbled, "Thanks... that's surprisingly thoughtful of you guys." Little Koala emitted a metallic scraping laugh, like the chime of a warped bell. "You are welcome." "My master said... we cannot leave our children to face the ghosts of the old era alone." ... Just as Little Koala had said, its master and his comrades had prepared everything. All she had to do was grasp the key already resting in the keyhole and give it a gentle turn. With an earth-shattering shudder, the starship that had slumbered for two centuries roared silently into the boundless sea of stars like an awakening titan. Everything went as smoothly as planned. Yet just as Jiang Xuezhou was about to disconnect from the data interface, Luo Yi tracked the connection back to her and emptied his magazine. A firefight erupted in the narrow corridor. Though the Orion's space combat team had left plenty of equipment near the data node, Jiang Xuezhou was no match for Luo Yi and took a round to the abdomen. The chubby robot was no combat unit either, but it drove its magnetic coils to fling surrounding metal wreckage at Luo Yi, covering the wounded Jiang Xuezhou as she retreated. Perhaps that too was an inevitable link in the chain. Its master hadn't told it what would happen in the future; it had no idea she would be shot. Before Luo Yi seized its head, it transmitted a map leading to the lower-deck gym to the escaping girl. That was the crash site of the Gemini's lander and the Orion. A hibernation pod remained there, alongside the last usable data interface. More importantly... That was the very interface that had once breached the cruiser's firewall! With this blade still lodged in the ship's heart, she would strike the final blow against the ghost haunting this tomb! When she accessed the warp drive through the data port earlier, the payload that cracked the firewall had already been uploaded into the bionic chip in her brain via the drive control room's cache server. "The drive has engaged... Follow the AR guidance path to the coordinates on the map. There is a lander there, and inside the cockpit is a hibernation pod..." Sealing the tear in her spacesuit with emergency patch tape, Jiang Xuezhou struggled through a half-open bulkhead door. Hearing the voice on the comms, she had no time to ask about Little Koala's condition and pressed urgently, "What next... what else do I need to do?!" A clattering echo carried through the bulkheads, followed by fragmented static on the comm channel. "Lie inside... plug the data cable into your neural interface... and then do nothing. Leave the rest... to us." Jiang Xuezhou asked in bewilderment, "...To... you?" Was there anyone else here? A broken but resolute voice answered through the channel. "Yes... Trust us... We will not leave you to face the cruelest future alone." That was the final transmission it left to this world. After slumbering in the freezing tomb for over two hundred years, it had finally fulfilled the mission entrusted to it by its master. "Why?!" Tearing free of the wreckage pinning him down, Luo Yi let out a furious roar and clamped his hand around Little Koala's head. He ripped away the laughably crude camera and sensors, then swung his titanium blade, cleaving the aging robot in two. Staring at the scrap blending into the debris, he roared at the top of his lungs, "Why do you keep opposing me?! Why?!!" Because of these fools, they had suffered two hundred agonizing years in the dark! And now these dead corpses were still trying to stop them! This was not just Luo Yi's rage. It was the fury of the Navigator, of every Celestial! Yet their shouts could not halt a bullet fired two centuries ago. In the end, the warp drive finished charging. The smart virus rooted in the shipboard servers was powerless against an active drive, forced to watch the hyperspace route open for the first time in two centuries. Luo Yi pinned his hopes on the second neutron torpedo currently loading. The missile, over a dozen meters long, detached from the launch rail. In a blinding flash of light, a searing neutron plume erupted! Almost simultaneously, a silent roar tore through space and time. Countless rays of light converged into an infinitesimal point, driving immense mass to puncture through space in an instant. From Earth looking up at geosynchronous orbit, the multi-kilometer-long starship vanished into thin air, leaping across five light-years toward Alpha Centauri. Moments before the jump, Jiang Xuezhou, lying inside the hibernation pod, watched the canopy seal shut and slowly closed her eyes. When the neutron plume swept across her body, she had already fully entered cryogenic stasis. Ultra-low temperatures preserved the maximum structural integrity of polymer proteins, mitigating the neutron plume's damage to organic tissue. Her consciousness fell into slumber. Yet the bionic chip in her brain did not stop working. A slender data cable linked to the nape of her neck slowly channeled data from the chip into the hibernation pod. Using the pod as a relay, it spread into the Gemini's lander and traveled through the bridge once built to infiltrate the Orion, penetrating the cruiser's shipboard servers. Two parallel timelines intersected in that moment. Massive data streams exchanged through resonance between two unrelated states of superposition. In terms of space and time, they never had direct contact, nor could they ever meet. Yet the series of unyielding, unwavering choices they made seemed completely coordinated. And in truth, they had been. Because they shared the very same faith... ... Time returned to two hundred and fifteen years ago. As the last traces of power depleted, the red alert lights stopped flashing. The entire starship fell as silent as the grave. Dragging an increasingly heavy body, Luo Yi in his powered armor pried open the twisted hatch and single-handedly hauled the hibernation pod into the empty cockpit. Unsurprisingly, he was likely the longest-surviving of the two hundred and twenty-seven. Perhaps because of his extensive cybernetics, the neutron plume hadn't been as immediately fatal as expected, allowing him to endure this long. Even so, he was nearing his end. Just as Dr. Wu had said, there wasn't a soul aboard the lander—not even a single chair. The crew of the Gemini had discarded their flesh long before launching their attack, becoming something else entirely. Indeed. They had already become "Celestials." Before long, the rest of the people on the Lagrange Point Space Station would likely become the same. What followed after was probably the "history" that child had spoken of. To think that a dying man like him would learn so many things he was never meant to know. In that sense, hadn't he come out ahead? Looking at the hibernation pod resting in the cockpit, Luo Yi grinned and exhaled a breath that held little warmth. This was likely the final brick. They had done everything within their power. The rest had to be left to the children who would step into this tomb two hundred and fifteen years from now. Just as Luo Yi was about to find a spot to sit and await death in peace, another thought struck him. No— There was one last thing. "If it were 'me'... he definitely wouldn't leave me alone, heh." With that realization, he stood up again, bracing against the open hatch as he floated out. If it were "me," seeking some sense of identity, he would surely try to find his own remains. If that bastard came looking here and saw the hibernation pod, their entire plan might unravel... Put simply, he had to find an easy place to be found, and die there. To prevent any complications, Luo Yi returned to the duty room, shut the hatch, shed his powered armor, and climbed into an emergency hibernation pod. Powered by a chemical battery, this emergency pod could maintain stasis for about fifty years. But given his battered condition with barely half a breath left, waking fifty years later would only mean waiting for death—if he woke up at all. In that regard, wastelanders were certainly tougher. Bolting whatever cybernetics they could onto themselves, sacrificing flesh and blood, but ending up that much sturdier. He found himself rather admiring the kid. His bloodshot eyes could no longer see clearly. Lying in the pod, Luo Yi gripped his dog tags tightly in his fist, finally drawing his last breath. "I'm begging you—" "Stop the other 'me'!"