Blizzard Zer… system advis… has reached the des… now in autopilot mode.
Somewhere in his haze, Zhao Chen felt as though a sound were ringing beside his ear.
Blizzard Zero ship intelligen… Blizzard Zero has… travel state, has reached the des… in autopilot mode.
The sound grew louder by degrees, and in that moment his memory seemed to come flooding back into his body.
Blizzard Zero ship intelligent-system advisory: Blizzard Zero has disengaged from the warp-travel state and reached the designated location; now in autopilot mode.
Zhao Chen's eyes flew open, and he gulped in great breaths of air as he watched the transparent pod hatch slowly opening.
The lighting on the bridge had already come back up, and familiar figures had begun getting the command bridge back to work.
"All personnel on the bridge, return to your posts within one minute and check the ship's readings. All personnel aboard, return to your posts within three minutes and stand ready."
Deputy Captain Charlotte was issuing one order after another, and at her side Zhao Wan'er was assisting.
Zhao Chen instinctively took two steps forward — only to find his legs gone soft beneath him. Had he not caught hold of a nearby handrail, he'd very nearly have pitched to the floor.
"Captain, you're awake. Our ship has reached the outer zone of the Northstar system's star gate without incident. All the ship's readings are normal, and we've returned to a normal travel state." Catching sight of Zhao Chen, Deputy Captain Charlotte reported the present situation first thing.
"You all woke before me?" Zhao Chen looked at them in surprise.
Zhao Wan'er looked at Zhao Chen's trembling legs and said with a light laugh, "We woke a minute earlier than you. And I must say, that constitution of yours won't do — I told you before, work on your body a bit more. Don't imagine that piloting a starship is all mental labor. To sail the interstellar deeps, you need to develop mind and body both!"
Zhao Chen had no attention to spare for Zhao Wan'er's teasing.
He asked Charlotte, "How long were we in hibernation?"
"32 minutes," Deputy Captain Charlotte answered.
32 minutes… it had left Zhao Chen feeling as though a very, very long time had passed.
And one shouldn't think that in those 30-some minutes they hadn't sailed far. Had this stretch of the voyage been made without the warp engine — on the conventional engine's speed alone — it might well have taken near 100 days!
The development of warp-engine technology had turned civilization toward the road of interstellar deep-voyaging.
It was, like star-gate technology, a world-overturning advance!
Suddenly Zhao Chen's stomach turned, and he instinctively pitched forward to retch.
Deputy Captain Charlotte seemed to have made ready in advance; a hovering waste bin appeared before Zhao Chen.
"Uuurgh… uuurgh…" Zhao Chen retched a good long while before he came round.
Only then did he learn that warp travel was so wretched a thing.
"This is your first time using a military hibernation pod, isn't it? On the trips back and forth between the Owl Dragon Star System and the academy before, you used a travel hibernation pod — those have a recovery phase built in, to let your body adjust. But a military hibernation pod isn't nearly so comfortable. By the time you reach fourth year, you'll get practice at this sort of thing. Nearly everyone throws up their first time," Zhao Wan'er explained from beside him — though the smile on her face was plainly a bit of showing off that her constitution ran the better of Zhao Chen's.
Zhao Chen paid Zhao Wan'er no mind. He staggered over and dropped into his captain's chair, then swept a look round the bridge.
He was the last to wake; the others' hibernation pods had long since sunk back below the bridge floor, and only now was Zhao Chen's own pod beginning to descend.
"Apply for star-gate transit; destination, the Arctic Fox system's star gate," Zhao Chen directed.
"Application already sent; we'll have a reply within 10 minutes," Deputy Captain Charlotte answered.
It didn't take the full 10; within a few minutes Blizzard Zero had its transit permit — though this was only after Zhao Chen had paid a star-gate usage fee.
Blizzard Zero sailed along the route sent over by the Northstar star-gate management department, and before long Zhao Chen saw rank upon rank of ships waiting to pass through the gate, and ships that had crossed through into the Northstar system.
None of that mattered, of course; Zhao Chen's eyes were drawn to that colossal star gate.
He'd studied the knowledge of star gates in his academy coursework, and seen pictures, and there was some of it in Zhao Chen's own memories besides.
But to see it thus, in the very flesh, was a first.
The Northstar star gate was shaped like three temple gates joined together, and from the midst of the three gates there radiated, respectively, a blue, a red, and a golden halo, like three lakes of colored light.
Gazing at this star gate, Zhao Chen found its data already welling up in his mind.
The Northstar star gate was a T3-tier Three-Divine-Gate-class star gate — a T3 gate independently developed by the Starlight Empire, and over 70% of the star-gate network within the Starlight Empire's bounds was made up of this very model.
"Captain, it's our turn." Deputy Captain Charlotte's voice pulled Zhao Chen back from the vast vista of the star gate before him.
"Mm." Zhao Chen drew a deep breath, and without thinking gripped tighter at the armrest of the captain's chair.
Making a star-gate jump through a star gate required no entering of deep-sea mode; the reasons behind that were complicated, and only those interstellar scientists could rightly explain them. The ordinary person needed only to grasp that it was so.
And the whole process was fast. Truly fast.
Zhao Chen felt only a flash before his eyes; the surroundings vanished, his pupils seemed to take in a world of riotous color, and then his vision began to return, and the black, boundless cosmos appeared once more before him.
This feeling was a good deal better than the warp travel earlier.
Which stood to reason — this, after all, had cost money.
The star coins an ordinary person earned in a whole lifetime weren't enough for even a short-hop star-gate jump of a single T1 ship.
Zhao Chen glanced at the time. Under 30 seconds had passed, no more.
This was the marvel of the star gate!
It drew the distance between one star system and the next enormously closer.
Star gates had their limits, though — there was a ceiling on the number of ships each could send through per hour, and the precise ceiling was set by the ships in question.
Say a gate could send 10,000 T1 ships in an hour; that would convert to only 1,000 T2 ships, or a mere hundred T3 ships. That was roughly the principle of it.
The higher a ship's tier, the higher the cost of using a star gate.
"We've reached the Arctic Fox star system, at the position of its star gate. Once we've sailed clear of the gate zone, we'll enter the warp-travel state again; we estimate arrival at Arctic Fox Starport in one hour." Deputy Captain Charlotte began laying out what came next.
Zhao Wan'er leaned in close to Zhao Chen's ear. "You really are a blind cat that stumbled onto a dead mouse. I'd never have imagined there'd be a talent for command like this among a lot of beast-folk slaves. This Charlotte is more the professional than no small number of the fifth-years I know."
Zhao Chen laughed inwardly. You haven't even seen the half of what she can do yet.
"Make for Arctic Fox Starport," Zhao Chen gave the order.