Wuchang had no idea his hideout had already been raided. Right now, full of food and drink, he was riding a motorboat across the pitch-black ocean of Huang'e.
"Little brother, see those white patches that show now and then just under the surface? Those are the stripes on the blueback fish. Here on Huang'e, amphibians haven't even evolved yet — plants haven't crawled up onto land either. Lichens and bacteria don't count, of course..."
On the speeding motorboat, Brother Mad Dog and Boss Jiang played the part of free tour guides, explaining the sights to Wuchang. Perhaps the boat's wake had disturbed the bluebacks, because a huge school of them suddenly leapt up from the seabed, arcing through the air on both sides of the boat like a bridge.
The ocean truly is the cradle of life; the mysterious seas of the Archean age never lack for wondrous creatures. Just as Wuchang stared open-mouthed at the blueback bridge, Brother Mad Dog shouted, "Look — a dreadbeast!"
That was exactly right. A little over two hundred meters to the left of the boat, an enormous deep-sea monster fish burst out of the water; by the look of its bulk, it was fully ten times the size of an Earth blue whale.
Its vast maw was brimming with seawater, and in that seawater at least a ton of bluebacks had already gone down its gullet.
"Lucky you! First time out on the water and you get to watch a dreadbeast feed. Looks like your stowaway road is going to be one surprise after another."
Even as he spoke, the huge wave the dreadbeast had thrown up came rushing at them. Mad Dog slammed the control lever, the anti-gravity engine roared to full power, and in the instant the wave struck, the whole motorboat rose to float ten meters above the water.
"Whoa — now that's the stuff!" Brother Mad Dog, thrilled, drove the boat through the great sheets of spray, charging straight for a nameless little island ahead.
Stowaways — especially one like Wuchang who could pay three thousand rainbow coins for a group passage — counted as VIPs of the smuggling ring. And a VIP naturally had the right to get acquainted with the whole smuggling process before departure. Today Mad Dog and Boss Jiang had brought Wuchang out to see their secret spaceship base.
The smugglers' base was hidden on a lonely island out at sea, just over a hundred kilometers in a straight line from Huang'e City. At the very center of this volcano-born island, inside the crater of the dead volcano, stood an enormous transport ship.
"See it? A Stag II light transport — four hundred meters long, two hundred and ten at its widest, two hundred and thirty from keel to top, maximum cargo capacity two hundred thousand tons..." The moment Boss Jiang laid eyes on his darling, his eyes lit up, and he could not help rattling off the ship's every specification to Wuchang.
"Good God, a warship that size and you call it a light transport? At four hundred meters away, a man is just a black dot with no features you can make out." Wuchang's astonishment was well founded. He had seen the aircraft carriers of his previous life, only around three hundred meters long, and even then he had thought them as imposing as mountains. But today, seeing a starship this huge, he understood just how narrow his horizons had been.
"A two-hundred-thousand-ton cargo capacity, and you use it for smuggling? Does Huang'e really have that much contraband to move?" Wuchang asked, puzzled. Just then the lights along one flank of the hull began to flash in dense succession, and a circular hatch about ten meters across slowly opened.
When the hatch had opened as far as it would go, the light suddenly blazed out: a silver-white pillar of light shot skyward, its bright tail flame burning for only a few seconds before giving way to the familiar blue glow of an anti-gravity engine.
Only when the pillar of light had punched through the clouds and vanished did Boss Jiang clear up Wuchang's confusion. "That's a space escape pod. They're meant for emergencies, but to us smugglers they make a fine smuggling tool. Small target, high speed — when you leave Huang'e, that's what you'll be riding."
"Huh? You're shipping us out in escape pods?" Wuchang might not know much about the spaceships of this world, but even an idiot knew that an escape pod was a shaky way to travel through space.
"Haha, the pod only gets you out of Huang'e's atmosphere. There's a transport waiting to pick you up in space. Did you think we worked alone? We smuggling merchants are one vast network — sharing resources is the whole point."
Hearing that, Wuchang relaxed completely and transferred the smuggling fee to Boss Jiang there on the crater's rim. The very moment the transaction went through, a land vehicle came shooting up out of the crater.
"Boss! There's an anomaly in space — an anomaly in Huang'e's space! The radar response is extremely strong, it's a large-scale anomaly..."
"What?" Boss Jiang took in his subordinate's report and leapt onto the land vehicle. Two more vehicles came racing up behind, and with Wuchang and Mad Dog aboard they went tearing down the mountainside like a gust of wind.
The huge transport ship grew nearer and larger, until the dense clusters of cannons and missile racks on its hull were clearly visible. Countless crewmen were at work maintaining the black hull, and against a spacecraft so vast every human looked as tiny as an ant.
The land vehicles flew all the way to the command module at the very front, and through a temporary emergency passage the three of them walked into the command hall — which by then was in complete chaos.
"Anomalous spatial discharge in coordinate range Z234-X789-Y987; preliminary observation puts the energy level at B..."
"Signal from the lunar-orbit satellite: the light distortion is already severe, and ripples like water waves have appeared in space..."
"Let's see how big the affected area is!" Boss Jiang shouted.
"B-plus is B-plus level — that should mean a fleet is carrying out a space fold..."
Boss Jiang knocked aside the coffee a beautiful secretary had brought him, seized the edge of the table and shouted tensely, "What is it? What on earth is happening? Why hasn't our intelligence network given us a single whisper?"
Boss Jiang was not the only one rattled; Mad Dog saw the seriousness of it too. "Could it be a fleet of military warships? But we're deep in the rear here — Orion Star Ring can't reach us at all, and Three Seas Star has no time to spare for the likes of us."
While everyone stood baffled, the display screens broke into a scrambled mess of color and then went black in an instant. "Enemy attack — we're under enemy attack! Six portable satellites have been suppressed by a powerful spatial electromagnetic weapon."
"Damn it, so it is a fleet of warships. What the hell is going on?"
While the command cabin was in chaos, out in space four hundred and twenty thousand kilometers from Huang'e, behind Huang'e's moon, a vast and boundless ripple of water began to take shape. With that ripple came abnormally intense electromagnetic interference, and the surge of energy instantly destroyed every piece of electronic equipment in the vicinity.
Immediately after came a statue of an imperious Celestial Maiden, appearing at the very center of the ripple. Clad in thin gauze, her body all but bare, her proud figure in golden proportions and her peerlessly beautiful face proved beyond doubt that the statue came from the hand of a master sculptor.
The Celestial Maiden gradually showed her true form: smiling, her right hand pointed straight ahead as though showing the way, while her left arm cradled a crown, the symbol of authority, and at the crown's peak a beautiful piece of folded obsidian was glowing.
Once the Celestial Maiden statue had fully emerged, there came the enormous bow of a warship. Every kind of indicator light glittered on the black alloy armor, and every weapons port stood open — this ship, one could well imagine, had gone to first-level battle readiness.
There was simply no describing the size of this warship. If that transport of a little over three hundred meters could be called magnificent, then what words were left for a warship over three thousand meters long? Wuchang really ought to have seen this miracle of the cosmos.
A three-kilometer hull — the eye could not take in its end. Such a warship could carry at least fifty thousand soldiers: already an armed force Huang'e would not dare to resist.
Nor was this ship the only one to fold space. Ten patrol ships over a thousand meters long followed it, and six fast assault warships over eight hundred meters. These escort vessels had arranged themselves around the great ship at the center in a textbook defensive formation.
Inside the warship carved with the Celestial Maiden lay a garden of exquisite beauty: ten mu in all, furnished with rockeries and fountains, pavilions and terraces, and even a sea of roses. Above that sea of flowers floated a flying carpet, and on the carpet a stunning woman was chatting with a soldier who sat bolt upright.
The woman's clothes would have looked familiar to Wuchang; in style they resembled somewhat the dress of Tang dynasty palace ladies, flowing and faintly hinting at an endless sensuality. The soldier, by contrast, wore Western-style plate armor engraved all over with countless fine geometric patterns.
"Have we arrived?" the languid beauty asked, idly stroking the sea of flowers beneath her.
"The space fold is complete. Huang'e lies at Your Highness's feet," the man in the plate armor said respectfully.
"Oh, Uncle Gu Bai, this isn't Three Seas. There's no need to be so formal with me. It's rare that I get out to look around — you should relax a little."
"Yes, Princess," the soldier Gu Bai said, though the look on his face stayed as stern as ever.
Just then a call request came through from the command cabin to the garden, and over the speaker came a man's voice, very serious and very proper.
"Your honored Highness, Ye Fei and Ye Tian greet you, and request permission for our landing ship to enter the escort ship Celestial Maiden."
"Oh, Uncle Ye Fei and Cousin Ye Tian! We're all family — please come in."
Out in space at that moment, a landing ship over a hundred meters long, carrying Governor Ye Fei and Guard Captain Ye Tian, hung within range of the Celestial Maiden's guns. Set against the vast escort ship, the little lander was nothing more than a trivial sesame seed.
On board, Ye Tian's eyes were shining with excitement, and the words came out of him unbidden: "Oh, my Princess Ye Mei, my one true love — do you know how much thought I've poured into making you happy? I'm certain of it: you will fall in love with me."
The middle-aged man standing beside Ye Tian was the Governor of Huang'e, Ye Fei, who rarely showed his face. He looked at his nephew with a bitter smile and offered up a silent prayer for him.
"Poor child. You did manage to draw Ye Mei's attention by contributing crystals, but how could a man like you ever climb to someone of Ye Mei's noble standing?"
"Don't forget, she is the Second Daughter the Emperor loves best of all — the Second Princess of our Horsehead Star Ring. And you? You may be a member of the imperial clan, but your family fell long ago; our whole branch has sunk to guarding Huang'e. What are you still dreaming of?"
Yet however it stood, Ye Tian was Ye Fei's closest nephew, and faced with his nephew's pleading, an uncle truly had no way to talk him out of it.
Once Princess Ye Mei nodded, the Celestial Maiden opened a hatch, and guide lights led the little landing ship into the escort carrier's vast belly.