A black spacecraft a thousand meters long was approaching the armed space station Azure Sky.
More precisely, it was an experimental space warship with a maximum length of 1,006 meters.
Its overall shape resembled a paramecium-a flattened oval, 198 meters at its widest and 105 meters at its tallest. Its heavy black armor plates gleamed with gold.
Its entire outer hull was made of demon gold, with a hardness comparable to diamond.
Unlike the ships in human films and television, it had none of the glowing openings people imagined covering a giant sightseeing vessel. Its pitch-black body was covered in layers of armor, without a single spot letting light through.
The outermost hull consisted of standard solid defensive plates 3.2 meters thick, followed by a dense, load-bearing demon gold framework roughly 2.8 meters thick, designed to dissipate force. It could reduce the transmitted shock from any expansion or explosion.
The final layer was an inner defensive armor plate 1.5 meters thick, completing the most heavily armored section of the entire warship.
Seven large ion thrusters at the stern provided the main thrust for the space warship, which weighed over twenty million tonnes. Numerous auxiliary maneuvering thrusters were also concealed beneath adjustable protective plates across its body, allowing it to perform any complex turn in space.
It belonged to the District 13 High-Tech Manufacturing Base of the River Domain Alliance Academy of Sciences and was protected under top-secret classification.
It was military equipment intended for the River Domain Alliance Space Force, serving an Alliance with a vast population of 4.1 billion. The prototype spacecraft was powered by high-output controllable nuclear fusion.
It was also equipped with a comprehensive suite of electromagnetic weapons and neural-linked controls.
It had lifted off directly from its secret manufacturing base and headed straight into space. Only during its ascent from the surface had the warship's enormous body been exposed to public view.
This quickly stunned all of humanity. After all, people on Water Blue Star joked about it every day.
Now that they had controllable nuclear fusion, could they become an interstellar civilization? Talking about that was completely different from watching humanity's first space warship lift off with their own eyes.
Its test flight already marked the maturity of the warship's technological systems. It could enter industrial mass production at any time.
The unit conducting the test flight was the First Detachment of the First Squadron under the River Domain Alliance's Second Space Corps.
And the makeup of this unit was truly unusual. The entire detachment consisted of 823 people: 600 landing marines and 223 ship crew.
All of them had been recruited through an interstellar game-Radiance.
Of course, these 823 people were the elite who had remained after rigorous trials, open selection, and training.
Their backgrounds, social connections, upbringing, emotional responses, physical fitness, intelligence, logic, nerve, courage, willpower... everything had been tested.
Inside the white hall of the warship's central cockpit, more than twenty futuristic hibernation pods stood in a circle within a hemispherical room.
Lying inside them were the warship's central controlling minds: its twenty-six principal operators.
Their bodies remained in these hibernation pods-cockpits-while their consciousnesses were connected through the equipment and uploaded into the warship computer's virtual cockpit.
In a sense, they had given the warship a soul. This allowed seamless control, reduced delays in issuing commands, and enabled the ship and its personnel to react together as quickly as possible. In other words, man and ship became one.
"The warship has reached the space station's outer perimeter. Signal link established."
An electronically synthesized young female voice echoed in everyone's ears aboard the warship.
The detachment commander, Zhao Qing, was only twenty. He was a bright, handsome young man with an upright bearing and sharply defined, resolute features. Despite his youth, he was already the captain of a warship.
The virtual control room was surrounded on all sides by the star-filled universe, rendered from real-time scans by the warship's many sensors.
More than a dozen operators stood within this real-time view of the star system. They wore military caps with white brims and black trim, each bearing a golden Alliance emblem surrounded by golden braid at the center of the brim.
Their Space Force uniform jackets were light blue with gold trim and golden braid at the chest, with large decorative gold buttons on the shoulders. Straight-cut trousers and tall black boots completed the uniforms.
They stood in a tiered fan-shaped formation, with the enormous Water Blue Star they were about to leave behind them.
Its breathtaking blue-and-white atmosphere was hazy as gauze, reflecting boundless gold in the rays of its star.
Captain Zhao Qing stood at the main control station, a virtual panel floating before him. More than twenty operators occupied the fan-shaped area ahead of him.
Every operator was very young. Standing inside the virtual space did not tire them, and each had a personal virtual control panel floating in front of them.
"Reporting: incoming communications request from the Azure Sky space station."
The young, energetic female communications officer, Huang Xue'er, had a voice like a nightingale's soft song.
Looking at the space station's communications signal on her virtual panel, she asked, "Shall I connect it?"
Zhao Qing said, "Set propulsion output to zero percent. Maintain current speed and heading. Run hull and engine diagnostics. Check energy consumption. Connect communications with the armed space station Azure Sky."
Zhao Qing had a pleasant voice, a resonant baritone with clear, rhythmic diction that made him sound like a poet reciting verse.
"...Beep-this is Lieutenant General Nibel, commander of the Azure Sky space station. Colonel Zhao Qing, welcome to space. Congratulations on completing the first phase of your takeoff tests."
"The Alliance has issued new orders. Once you receive them, carry them out as soon as possible."
The middle-aged man's voice held no emotion. His delivery was rigid and mechanical, like a machine repeating a recording.
He finished casually and cut the connection without waiting for Zhao Qing's reply.
The young crew clenched their fists, angered by the contempt and disdain in Nibel's tone.
But their advanced training and professional discipline kept them from making any unnecessary noise.
They maintained silence, taking care not to affect anyone else's emotions.
Huang Xue'er said, "Captain, the orders have been confirmed as originating from General Space Command. Please receive them."
Huang Xue'er's voice remained as lovely and melodious as ever.
Zhao Qing looked at the envelope on his virtual panel and waved a hand, opening it with his captain's authorization to reveal a detailed set of orders.
As he read, he said, "The right to crew this warship should originally have gone to the most seasoned Space Force veterans. It was the Deputy Commander who overruled the objections and organized simulated combat trials for the younger generation. That was how we got our chance to stand out."
"Don't judge by appearances."
"Yes, Captain!"
They exchanged glances, brimming with confidence.
The lowest-ranking person present was already a commissioned officer. All they needed was for the Alliance to accelerate the expansion of the Space Force.
As the first "veterans" to board a warship, how could they possibly miss out on promotions and new postings?
The day they wore a general's stars was within reach. As long as they stayed alive, their futures were full of promise!
Zhao Qing said, "Propulsion team, report engine status. Resources team, report energy consumption. Tactical team, run a navigation simulation for the time and expenditure required to reach Orange Star."
Bulu Lang, leader of the ship's propulsion team, was a muscular blond man with pale blue eyes like gemstones.
The virtual panel before him changed to a simulation of the spacecraft's main propulsion engine.
Bulu Lang said, "The engines are in excellent condition. System self-checks show no issues. The plasma acceleration chamber is currently holding at eight hundred degrees Celsius, sufficient to support a long voyage."
Lin Fan, leader of the resources team, was slender and tall, with the appearance of a handsome, dark-haired young man.
But his gaze held a sharp edge as he said, "Energy reserves at 99.8 percent."
Li Tianle, leader of the tactical simulation and calculation team, looked mature for his age. With his square face, thick eyebrows, and full lips, he was quite ordinary-looking, but the calm resolve in his dark eyes put people at ease.
An optical virtual model of the entire Solar System appeared before him. He then zoomed in on the area containing the warship's position and Orange Star's projected location.
Li Tianle said, "The warship is approximately eighty-four million kilometers from Orange Star. At one hundred percent propulsion output, we should arrive in one hundred hours, or roughly four days."
"What about seventy-five percent?"
"An estimated one hundred and twenty-six hours. About five days!"
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