198: Chapter 198 The Phoenix Leaves the Nest, CME's First Slap!

Alien civilization navigation timer, day 135.

Near-Earth Orbit Base, docking area.

The luan bird was right there.

When Su Che walked into the bridge passageway carrying his duffel bag, Technician Wei had already pulled up the pre-launch system self-test checklist in the command and control cabin.

A data logbook was opened to a new page on the left side of the console, with a pen resting horizontally across it, waiting to be picked up.

"Joint inspection complete, all seventeen items are green," Technician Wei reported.

Su Che hung his duffel bag on a hook in the living quarters, walked into the command and control cabin, sat in the pilot's seat, and pulled the safety restraint strap over to buckle it.

The smell inside the cabin was exactly the same as the simulation training cabin: metal, sealant, and a faint, scorched scent unique to high-energy battery packs.

The difference was that the panels here were not showing simulated data; every reading was backed by a real hundred thousand tons of steel.

"Deep Space Main God AI, take control of all ship systems."

Computing power usage climbed, and the main god ai cursor stabilized simultaneously across the three main screens of the command cabin.

Su Che pulled up the departure application on the control panel and sent it.

The Jiuquan Launch Base monitoring network and the Near-Earth Orbit Base command room both turned green simultaneously.

Departure authorization arrived in less than twenty seconds.

The luan bird slowly detached from the docking area.

There was no roar, no vibration; the Anti-gravity field compressed the hundred thousand tons of inertia below a threshold that no one standing in the cabin could feel.

The only change was the base structure outside the window slowly receding, followed by the pure black of deep space swallowing up all man-made objects.

Su Che stared at that patch of blackness for a few seconds.

Leaving the Earth's gravity gradient from a 400-kilometer orbit meant he could not go full speed; he had to accelerate gradually.

He pulled up the thrust curve, entered the commands according to the acceleration plan, and the main god ai took over, with the engine cluster ramping up output in a pre-designed stepped rhythm.

The output power of the advanced Controlled Nuclear Fusion iteration read steadily on the panel.

This hundred-thousand-ton steel beast began to stretch its speed in deep space.

Technician Wei adjusted the speed curve to the secondary screen at the auxiliary console, picked up his pen, and began recording in the logbook while watching the data.

The other eleven deep space technicians were distributed in their respective functional cabins; the four in life support had already begun routine inspections, and the two in safety and emergency were conducting fixed checks in the equipment cabin.

Su Che glanced at the speed reading and turned to look toward the rear cabin.

Everything was normal.

Twenty thousand kilometers, fifty thousand kilometers, one hundred thousand kilometers.

The speed climbed gear by gear, without any sensation of breakthrough; it was like driving a well-designed car, with only the mileage quietly accumulating.

About forty minutes later, Su Che brought up the current coordinates and compared them with the L2 point data.

Still heading there.

...

Arrived at L2 point.

Su Che slowed the luan bird down, the main god ai synchronized the attitude adjustment, and the entire ship stopped for ten minutes at the exact center of the coordinates in his grandfather's letter.

During those ten minutes, the Global Deep Space Quantum Radar performed a full-spectrum scan of the surroundings.

The main god ai's conclusion appeared on the secondary screen: no anomalous celestial bodies, no man-made signals, no gravitational field distortions.

Just an ordinary patch of deep space.

Su Che leaned back in his seat, hands resting on the edge of the console, not moving.

His grandfather had spent half his life calculating this place fifteen years ago; with the technology of that time, what a massive undertaking that must have been.

He suddenly remembered that his grandfather had also said he had left a seed here.

Now the puzzle was solved; that was not a seed; what his grandfather had left was a deep space probe.

But he was standing here now, and there was nothing, so quiet that even the main god ai could not find anything worth noting.

The seed his grandfather had planted was gone, but the coordinates remained!

These coordinates were not meaningless; it was just that the time had not come yet.

Su Che packed the full-spectrum scan data of this coordinate area, stored it in the encrypted vault of the strategic resource database, and labeled it: "Seed missing, Grandfather's coordinates, continue monitoring."

"Continue departure."

The luan bird accelerated again, turned around, and headed toward the deep space isolated mine coordinates more than twenty million kilometers away.

Technician Wei turned a page in his logbook and added a few lines of records.

...

The deep space cruising speed stabilized at 180 kilometers per second; the main god ai corrected the course twice, both minor deviations that returned to zero within seconds.

The quantum encrypted communication terminal vibrated.

Su Che switched the channel to check; it was Lin Waner.

The message was just one line:

[ "Have you left L2?" ]

Su Che replied:

[ "Left, normal." ]

The other side paused for about two minutes.

[ "How long did you stand there?" ]

Su Che thought for a moment and replied:

[ "Ten minutes, nothing there, just very quiet." ]

No more response.

Su Che put down the terminal, picked up the small cloth bag Lin Waner had stuffed in his luggage, felt the folded paper, did not open it again, and put it back.

Outside the cabin, deep space was just a vast expanse of black with no reference points.

...

Alien civilization navigation timer, day 136.

Mid-cruise.

A small orange box popped up in the upper right corner of the Global Deep Space Quantum Radar status panel.

Not an alarm level, but a monitoring notification.

Su Che clicked it.

The main god ai had flagged a set of Coronal Mass Ejection data in the solar wind observation sub-module; the CME direction intersected with the current flight path, with an estimated high probability of a glancing blow at the edge.

The word "edge" in the context of deep space did not mean it was fine.

The edge of a CME could still unleash high-energy particle flux, still disrupt communications, and still subject the ship's hull to a round of particle bombardment.

Su Che enlarged the data and leaned back.

"Technician Wei, come take a look."

Technician Wei walked over holding the logbook and bent down to look at the screen.

"CME edge..." Technician Wei stared at the particle flux peak line for a few seconds. "Can we bypass it?"

"How much extra time would it take to bypass it?" Su Che asked the main god ai.

The main god ai calculated for three seconds, and the result popped up on the secondary screen: bypassing would take nearly eight extra hours, with fuel consumption increasing by seven percent.

"No bypass," Su Che said. "Max out the quantum shields, lock down the signal with the stealth layer, and brace for impact."

Technician Wei wrote a line in his logbook without comment.

Su Che entered the pre-activation defense command into the control console.

All 6,400 sectors of the quantum stealth shield switched from standby to combat readiness, and the charging reading of the superconducting energy storage units climbed.

The signal shielding module of the ultimate stealth film was dialed to the maximum, locking all detectable features on the ship's hull inside the shell.

The advanced Controlled Nuclear Fusion iteration increased output, providing full power to both the shields and life support systems.

The spatial self-repair structure module entered a pre-activated state.

The main god ai cranked the refresh rate of the global situational awareness to the maximum, waiting for the signal of the storm's leading edge.

Su Che checked the restraint straps in the pilot's seat; every one of them was secure.

...

When the edge of the CME arrived, the Quantum Radar sensed it first, nearly a minute faster than any other sensor.

The main god ai issued a ship-wide alarm, and the voice prompts played through.

All deep space technicians returned to their fixed positions and buckled their restraints, the life support cabin air pressure automatically locked, and the external sensors in the equipment cabin performed protective retraction.

Then the particle stream struck.

The energy density reading of the shield sectors skyrocketed within three seconds; the main god ai dispatched energy from surrounding sectors to the impact zone, the thermal management reading of the liquid-cooled interlayer climbed, and the heat dissipation wings deployed.

Su Che stared at the data jumping simultaneously on the three main screens.

Shields intact, stealth layer intact, engine cluster output normal...

A red box popped up in the lower left corner of the main screen.

The deep space mining robotic arm on the ship's belly; the combination of high temperature and particle bombardment caused thermal expansion stress to exceed the safety threshold.

The locking mechanism at the base of the robotic arm automatically triggered protection, two sets of attitude control engines were forcibly isolated, overload protection started, and their output shut down.

On the attitude panel, course deviation began to accumulate slightly.

The main god ai made a judgment within 0.1 seconds, followed the standard safety protocol, prepared to initiate the return procedure, and switched to the minimum exposure route.

Su Che glanced at the return preparation command, did not move, and placed his hands on the control console panel.

"Main God, pause automatic return."

The computing power usage fluctuated, and the return procedure hung there without executing.

Technician Wei looked up from the auxiliary console, his pen frozen in mid-air.

Su Che pulled up the bottom-level interface of the luan bird command and control system and manually accessed the bottom-level architecture of the attitude control module.

This architecture was written by his own hand; he knew better than the main god ai which paths were viable, which were blocked by protection locks, and the emergency channels he had left behind at the time.

Bypassing the protection locks, he accessed the control bus of the two isolated engine sets directly and manually injected the restart command sequence.

At the same time, he used a backup channel in the energy routing to temporarily overclock the shields, pushing up the energy density in the impact zone to counteract the further effects of thermal expansion stress on the robotic arm's locking mechanism.

The restart sequence went in; the status lights of the two engine sets turned from red to yellow, then from yellow to green.

The course deviation reading stopped accumulating and began to fall back.

Su Che manually calibrated the Quantum Radar signal source, corrected the orbital deviation, and pulled the flight path back toward the target coordinates.

Then he switched back to the global command interface of the main god ai and canceled the return preparation.

Throughout the entire process, Technician Wei's pen never fell.

Only when all readings turned green did Technician Wei place his pen on the logbook, his breathing rate returning to normal.

...

The CME particle stream lasted for about twenty minutes, with the highest main peak flux concentrated in the first eight minutes.

After eight minutes, the Quantum Radar reported that the main body of the CME had left the intersection, the shield energy storage units began to automatically recharge, and the heat dissipation wings retracted under the dispatch of the main god ai.

Technician Wei turned a page in his logbook, copied half of the data from the twenty minutes off the screen, stopped, and looked at Su Che.

"That engine restart part," Technician Wei began, his voice a bit dry. "That path isn't in the manual."

"The manual was written by me," Su Che adjusted the backrest of the pilot's seat back to the normal angle. "The path I left behind was also written by me."

Technician Wei capped his pen, tucked it into the logbook, and closed it.

The communication terminal lit up.

This time it was Lieutenant General Peng Zhenbang's encrypted channel; it was a reaction from the real-time ground monitoring, as the data curve for the CME segment had already been transmitted back.

"Su Che, the ground has seen the restart records for the two engine sets; a report is required."

"I intervened manually; the main god ai followed safety protocols, and I bypassed them. The reason is that there was no reason to abort the mining mission; the robotic arm locking mechanism has an emergency channel, and the risk was within the controllable range."

"Received."

Lieutenant General Peng Zhenbang hung up without even asking an extra question.

Su Che cast his gaze back to the main screen.

The coordinates of the deep space isolated mine were still shining on the star map; that cluster of platinum-group elements and superheavy isotopes was floating silently in the void somewhere ahead, waiting for the luan bird to bring them back.

The quantum encrypted communication terminal vibrated again.

Lin Waner.

[ "That data just now... it was transmitted back to the ground." ]

Su Che picked up the terminal.

[ "It's fine, handled it." ]

[ "...That path isn't in the manual, is it?" ]

Su Che looked at this line of text and replied:

[ "The manual was written by me." ]

The other side was silent for a long time.

Then came the last message:

[ "I'll treat you to milk tea when you get back; I'll make it." ]

Su Che put down the terminal and looked again at the deep black on the main screen.

In the twenty-three million kilometer wasteland, the luan bird was cutting through deep space in solitude, one hundred and eighty kilometers per second, without stopping.

And the mining robotic arm on the ship's belly, in the silence after the CME passed.

Had already begun its first deployment test.