Although curvature navigation was a first-time experience for all the academicians.
The almost unchanging scenery outside the windows soon grew tiresome.
Once the novelty had completely worn off, everyone entered cryosleep, one after another.
The lights aboard the [Earth] gradually went out, and the bustle slowly gave way to silence.
In the depths of space, protected by curvature bubbles, the fleet raced toward its first destination at ten times the speed of light.
There, the fleet stopped briefly to replenish its nearly depleted antimatter reserves.
Everything was carried out autonomously by robots under Zero's control.
According to the preset program,
Zero would only awaken all the researchers once they reached their destination: the Kepler-452 Stellar System.
Earth Calendar Year 3605.
The blue glow of a holographic projection lit up the dim command center of the [Earth] once again.
[Current distance to target stellar system: 1 light-year.] [Alert perimeter reached. Fleet exiting curvature navigation...]
One light-year from the Kepler-452 Stellar System.
This was an empty stretch of space between stellar systems.
In the cold, silent universe, apart from a few scattered points of starlight, there was only a handful of tiny meteoroids.
Suddenly.
The calm fabric of spacetime began to churn violently.
The next second, a vast fleet abruptly appeared in that empty expanse.
The cluster of tiny meteoroids ahead of the fleet seemed to suffer some invisible attack. In an instant, they shattered into countless fine particles and dispersed into the observable universe.
The turbulence in spacetime gradually subsided, and the fleet's operations stabilized. The intensity of the gamma rays released by the antimatter engines at their sterns also slowly diminished.
A few minutes later.
A hatch on the side of the enormous flagship at the center of the fleet slowly opened.
A large number of