Yu Lian woke from his sleep. The first thing he saw was, once again, an unfamiliar ceiling.
...All right, actually, he recognized it. It was mainly because he had just woken from an excessively intense, long dream, and his brain was still a little scrambled.
He lay in bed for nearly half a minute before confirming that he really was aboard the Fuxi, in his own room.
Then he got up and called the bridge. The call connected in less than half a second. The officer on duty reported that the fleet was in good condition. They had already left the Spiral Nebula's boundaries and entered the final stretch of the "high seas" route. At their current speed, they should reach Alliance territory in 72 hours and arrive at Turanka a week later.
In short, the schedule Earth's bigwigs had given them was harsh, but the fleet's officers and crew were united in purpose and determined to get there on time—maybe even a few days early.
They were only traveling at a somewhat higher speed, not even marching at full tilt. Why was "united in purpose" necessary? Still, Yu Lian was gratified to see his subordinates in such high spirits.
He still wasn't reassured, so he simply opened the panoramic skylight.
As commander of the fleet—though his term had only a few days left—he still had a well-equipped room. That included a panoramic skylight. Of course, "skylight" was just a figure of speech. It was really a holographic projection that displayed the surrounding starfield in real time.
The projected surroundings were still somewhat distorted to Yu Lian's perception and eyesight, but he could at least make out the stars' trajectories. That was enough for him.
He expanded his spatial awareness and entered the navigator's state of a psionic.
The officer