The hyperspace tunnel collapsed with a sound like ripping silk.
The Sovereign Aurora emerged into the Emerald Nebula Drift, surrounded by vast, luminous clouds of green cosmic dust and floating asteroid reefs. The radiation here was thick and erratic, glowing like emerald fog that swirled against the dreadnought’s golden energy shields.
Xing Yao stood at the main astrogation terminal, her Nine-Heaven Starlight Jade Ocular Cores spinning with brilliant golden light. Her slender fingers danced across the sensor grid, clearing away the nebula’s heavy electromagnetic static.
“Sensors locked on Sector 88,” Xing Yao reported, her voice tightening with distress. “Visual feed coming through on the main bridge display right now.”
Beside her, Grandma Chen pressed her hands to her apron, looking at the tactical screen with deep sorrow in her eyes.
“When I was a little girl in the harbor,” Grandma Chen whispered softly, “my grandfather told me stories about the Void Star-Whales. He was shipwrecked in an asteroid storm sixty years ago. His oxygen tanks were empty, his engines were dead, and he had made peace with death. Then a colossal silver star-whale swam out of the dark. It gently nudged his life-pod twenty thousand miles back to the safety of the civilian shipping lanes. They never ask for a single copper in return. They are the gentle grandpas of the stars.”
