…
“Lin…Lin…wake up…Lin!”
"Well… "
"Lin Xi!"
Lin Xi finally broke free from the dark and heavy coma. He opened his eyes and his vision was blurry. But even with the double vision and the buzzing sound in his brain, he could still see that the man next to the sleeping cabin was in a particularly bad condition.
"Bryce?"
Lin Xi asked vaguely.
It was not until he opened his mouth that he realized that in addition to his brain being in a daze, his voice was also hoarse as if it had just been rubbed with sandpaper - as his vocal cords vibrated, a strong smell of rust emerged from Lin Xi's throat.
The area under the nose was sticky and wet.
Lin Xi wiped his nose and was not surprised to see the bright red blood on his fingers.
What's worse is that when Lin Xi tried to recall what happened, his mind was blank.
No, maybe not completely blank.
Lin Xi still remembered the countless noisy beeps and warnings, which finally merged into a roar, and then... the impact...
Then, there was severe pain all over the body.
"Damn... what on earth happened... "
In addition to the pain, there was also an indescribable feeling of nausea and dizziness. Lin Xi unconsciously grasped the edge of the sleeping cabin to prevent himself from being dragged back into coma by that terrible discomfort again.
The broken edge of the sleeping cabin cut his palm, but the numbness of his body made it difficult for him to even feel the stinging pain in his palm.
"Take it easy, man." Bryce noticed Lin Xi's action. He stretched out his hand and waved it in front of Lin Xi's eyes. "... There was a problem with the warp. Do you remember?"
"Transfer... Leap..."
Lin Xi climbed out of the sleeping cabin with the help of Bryce.
His body was sore and weak. No matter what happened, he was lying in the sleeping cabin when it happened, and the sequelae of his cryogenic sleep being violently interrupted were now lashing him like an invisible whip.
"The Sith side hasn't given us any more feedback. The only thing we know now is that our Mr. Sun God has not arrived at the correct location."
Bryce whispered in Lin Xi's ear, and the latter could only lean weakly against the obviously damaged sleeping cabin, half sitting on the ground.
Bryce's voice almost sounded like an echo.
Lin Xi looked around him. The light green light of the emergency light ominously enveloped the entire cabin. The metal floor and walls proved the old age of the spacecraft facilities. There were ten sleeping cabins placed side by side in the cabin, and now the transparent shells were either opened or broken.
There were bloodstains next to several sleeping pods.
The lighting system was broken, the air was filled with the unpleasant smell of something burning, and the anti-shock gel had congealed on the ground, turning an unpleasant yellow-brown color.
The beeping alarm aggravated Lin Xi's headache and dizziness.
WARNING—COORDINATES—COORDINATES INVALIDATED—TRANSITION PROCEDURE TERMINATED—WARNING—PROCEDURE UNABLE TO TERMINATE—
In a trance, he seemed to hear a series of steady and indifferent mechanical sounds in his ears.
"Well… "
Lin Mao suddenly covered his head and took a few deep breaths before he realized that it was just an auditory hallucination.
Bryce knelt beside Lin Xi with a worried look on his face and injected him with a tube of medicine.
Lin Xi groaned, feeling the cold medicine gradually spreading in his blood vessels.
After dozens of seconds, his condition finally stabilized, and his memory and thinking ability, which had been as hazy as fog before, finally slowly returned to his brain.
But it seems that when Lin Xi finally realized what was happening, he couldn't tell whether it was better to wake up or just continue to be dazed.
The Apollo he was on was a Zeus-class space exploration ship, with a total length of 1.8 kilometers, equipped with a five-meter-thick outer wall made of more than 300 different materials and two ion engines provided by the Anya. This research ship was a product left over from the great exploration era, and both its appearance and size had a strong sense of the times. Yes, the Apollo could be called a behemoth on Earth... However, compared to the vast universe, this huge spaceship was as small as dust.
A failed jump often means loss and confusion of coordinates. God knows how much time it will take them to find the way back to Earth.
Thinking of this, it was not difficult for Lin Xi to understand why Bryce's face looked so bad.
On the way to the emergency room with Lin Xi to meet up with the rest of the crew, Bryce kept chattering uncontrollably.
"... It's my fault. If it weren't for me, you should still be teaching peacefully on Earth. You are not me. You really shouldn't have followed me to that ghost place full of lunatics to waste your life." The situation in the corridor of the spacecraft was better than that in the cabin. At least the lighting facilities were still in operation. Lin Xi turned his head and glanced at Bryce. He noticed that the latter's pupils were trembling slightly due to the extreme mental tension.
"Look what these guys did, damn it, now you're stuck like me—"
"Calm down, man," Lindsey sighed, squeezing Bryce's shoulder. "You talk like you have control over this."
Lin Xi's adopted brother is exceptionally tall and muscular, but few people know that he has a soft heart and a tendency to worry too much. These traits make Bryce a perfect brother, and also make it almost no problem for Lin Xi to enter Bryce's family. However, when encountering some problems, Lin Xi has to spare some energy to comfort him.
And, to a certain extent, what Bryce said was not completely unreasonable. It was indeed because of Bryce that Lin Xi stayed in the Apollo spacecraft at this time (and endured the nausea and headaches caused by concussion and interrupted sleep).
He was not a crew member of the Apollo (which was a fortunate thing, otherwise Lin Xi was sure that Captain Taran would find a way to throw him out of the ship through the domestic waste discharge port).
If it weren't for that accident, he would have been a leisurely botany teaching assistant at the Earth-Moon United University, who only had to worry about his receding hairline.
However, just two years ago, because Bryce was involved in a private research project related to the planet Sunu, and this research project required a reliable "scholar" related to botany, Lin Xi was packed up by the department head who had disliked him for a long time and sent to the Apollo to participate in this so-called "Earth-Sunu Cultural and Material Exchange Project."
Of course, everyone knows that this is not some shitty private project at all. It is just the government plundering materials in disguise for some reason - in more common terms, smuggling.
The star Sunu, located on the edge of Orion, was once a relatively rich and peaceful planet.
Sunu is rich in a special substance called "earth milk" that can greatly improve and stimulate the vitality of intelligent creatures, as well as some other handicrafts. It is precisely because of this that the lives of the Sunu people are quite moist and peaceful due to the abundant resources. They look similar to humans, and their technological development is only slightly behind that of the Earth.
Due to various reasons, the relationship between Earth and Sunu has always been quite good... until a few decades ago, when for some completely inexplicable reason, the innocent and leisurely Sunu people suddenly went crazy.
It is difficult to understand the behaviors of the Sunu people using human thinking patterns, even for the most authoritative Sunu culture experts in the Earth-Moon United University.
The Sunu people went crazy in all kinds of bizarre ways, including unreasonable suicide and all kinds of horrific cannibalism. In just a few decades, this group of crazy aliens completely destroyed the entire planet. In the past, that is, in normal times, all kinds of materials that were firmly controlled by the Sunu government and would never flow into the outside world - including their most precious earth milk, other rare plants, animals and precious metals, all flowed into the pockets of earthlings in a semi-official way.
Yes, the Earthlings felt sorry for the few sane Sunu left, but that didn't mean they would be soft-hearted when it came to plundering the few supplies those poor creatures had.
…
"Besides, I'd rather stay with you and face all this than trying to teach a bunch of empty-headed idiots on Earth while worrying about the missing spacecraft." Lin Xi said sincerely, "Look at the bright side. At least our old man didn't turn into pieces in the warp fault, but ended up in... um... some fucking place..."
When passing by the viewfinder, Lin Xi subconsciously looked out, and then stuttered unusually because of what he saw.
It was completely different from the desolate and silent place imagined. This completely unfamiliar place was actually infested with lush life forms on the surface. From an earthling's perspective, those things looked like tropical plants.
It’s just that the tropical plants on Earth don’t have such huge sizes and such gorgeous appearances.
In the gaps between those "things", there was a hazy, milky white mist floating, like water vapor.
"This should be an unnumbered asteroid. Thank God, our old man is quite reliable sometimes. I heard that there was an explosion in the warehouse area, but no matter what, we still managed to make an emergency landing." Bryce followed Lin Xi's gaze to take a look at the scenery outside, then carefully considered his words, "When I came to find you, Sith was still comparing the star map to try to figure out our current position. God bless us not to stray too far."
"Who knows..."
Lin Xi withdrew his gaze and muttered absentmindedly.
This is a planet with life - from the perspective of the passengers who were forced to land on the spacecraft, this is actually a good thing. After all, many elements for the survival of life are more or less common across the universe.
But from Lin Xi's own perspective, the moment he saw those things, he felt goose bumps all over his body.
There was no reason at all, he just didn't like this damn place, and he realized it immediately.
Similarly, the captain of the Apollo, Taran Ida, obviously had the same idea as Lin Xi. Of course, Taran didn't just dislike this strange planet, he also disliked all the humans on the Apollo, even if those humans were his crew members.
When we arrived at the emergency survival room, Taran was screaming and yelling furiously.
"I don't care - someone has to go check the warehouse! Damn it, do you have any idea how important that statue is!"
"It's just a weird fossil..."
"Oh, in your eyes, a fossil that has remained active for billions of years and can produce 'earth milk' is just 'weird'? I really hope you can remember that we traveled thousands of miles and spent two years to go to that damn crazy planet just for this thing! And now, it's in the warehouse, and all the information is cut off! Now is not the time for you bunch of losers to hide in a safe place and cry and be lazy! I need to know its condition! Now! Immediately!"
The moment the metal door opened smoothly, Lin Xi frowned unhappily as he listened to Taran's hoarse scream.
If he hadn't boarded the Apollo, it would have been hard for Lin Xi to imagine that someone like Taran could actually become the captain of a space exploration ship.
When faced with such a weird problem as a failed jump, he should have remained calm, soothed everyone, and organized the ship's personnel to carry out repairs and self-rescue as quickly as possible.
But now the man standing in the middle of the room was as irritable and frantic as a wild gorilla whose bananas had been stolen.
Lin Xi even felt that wild gorillas would be better than Taran. After all, gorillas would not be as neurotic, crazy, or mentally ill as Taran.
"After forcibly interrupting cryogenic sleep, humans need at least two hours to relieve the aftereffects of the interruption, not to mention the secondary resonance caused by the failed jump and the direct impact of the forced landing! The bridge leading to the warehouse has been broken, and it is very dangerous there now. We have to wait until the others recover from the aftereffects before we can let them go down..."
The deputy captain, Alyssa, was petite and mild-tempered. During the two-year voyage, she served as a lubricant between Taran and the other crew members. However, at this time, the gentle aura on her body had disappeared. At this time, she was standing in front of the other surviving crew members with a sullen face, speaking coldly to Taran.
The arrival of Lin Xi and Bryce interrupted this tense argument.
But at the same time, the moment they walked in, Taran and Alyssa's eyes fell on them.
It's just that Taran was looking at Lin Xi, while Alyssa was looking at Bryce. The gazes of the pair behind were blended, tender and affectionate, and in contrast, Taran's gaze when he looked at Lin Xi was as sharp as a poisoned knife.
Lin Xi: “… Ahem.”
I always feel that I came at the wrong time.
"Wow, glad to see you're still alive, Captain Taran."
Lin Xi raised his eyebrows and greeted Taran.
Everyone could hear that the words “I’m so happy” sounded insincere.
His tone even sounded regretful.
Taran's eyes rolled and he stared at Lin Xi without saying anything.
He was a very thin man, so thin that Lin Xi even doubted how he passed the health check when he boarded the ship. His skin was so white that it was completely bloodless and tightly stretched over his skull, and one could almost see the shape of his bones. This made Taran look like some kind of mummified corpse, and the two eyeballs embedded in his eye sockets occasionally revealed a strange and crazy aura.
It has to be said that when he looked at someone like this, even Lin Xi couldn't help but feel a little creepy.
Lin Xi subconsciously looked at his brother.
Actually, when he first got on board, Taran was not as abnormal as he is now. However, no one knew whether it was because the things they brought back to Earth for scientific research purposes were too precious, or whether it was the rumored rare Sunu bloodline in Taran's body that was at work. In short, ever since the ion engine of the Apollo was started and the spacecraft left Sunu, Taran seemed more and more weird and neurotic.