We’d been in the asteroid belt for days, and we still had nothing.
The view felt identical to day one: asteroids in every shape and size, drifting in the dark.
We hadn’t found a single mine, base, warship, wreck, or Luofu—nothing but rocks. And there still wasn’t so much as a thread of Miller to follow.
I started to wonder whether I was even qualified for this mission.
Meanwhile, Dorian and Big Blue stayed weirdly enthusiastic about the floating stones. At this point they didn’t even need to run analyses—one glance and they could tell you what kind of asteroid it was.
Of course, the two of them rarely agreed. I spent about half my time listening to them argue over whether some particular rock was stony, carbonaceous, or magnesium-iron.
Once, to prove a point, they actually wanted to blow an asteroid apart with the ship’s guns. I had to shut that down.
Maybe the only “achievement” of the past few days was creating two full-time asteroid taxonomists.
Well. Almost the only achievement.
Someone else was having the time of his life: Danser—the robot who proudly claimed to be the first machine with true artistic creativity.
He said the universe and the Ring had given him an endless supply of inspiration. In the middle of work, he would suddenly stop and stare into space.
At first I didn’t get it. Then I learned he was “composing in real time.” He wrote several pieces he believed could stand beside humanity’s classics—and demanded I read them.
Since poetry is my favorite genre, I couldn’t exactly slack off. I read his masterpiece with great seriousness.
He insisted these were his two finest excerpts:
1—
I cross the boundless starfield,
arriving at the wondrous Ring.
Electricity runs through my body;
I feel unbearably proud.
Look to the left—
a handful of big and small asteroids.
Look to the right—
also a handful of big and small asteroids.
I fly between them,
and suddenly feel a lofty kind of awe…
…
2—
My feet are forged from iron;
with them I walk the world.
Everywhere, I tilt my face to the stars—
they shine like diamonds,
wide as an ocean,
many as sand,
more beautiful than code.
They wink at me,
as if inviting me to come.
Now I have arrived;
they are within reach.
They no longer wink,
and they open their secrets to me…
…
Truly excellent. I didn’t hold back my praise. After all, Danser was the assistant to humanity’s greatest artist.
But when I reread the poems later, I had the unsettling feeling that I could write something like that too.
Also—today, something else left me restless.
Today was my eleventh day since leaving Lansen. It was also the day Decapitation Operation would be executed.
The plan was thorough. Lord Blin was leading it personally. There was no way it could fail. Phantom Forge was doomed.
At last… from this day forward, there would be no more Father.
Goodbye, Father…
For some reason, a thin, almost weightless melancholy brushed past me, and I couldn’t explain it. It irritated me. (This sentence was later deleted.)
I keep looking back toward Lansen. From here, Lansen has become just another star—but thankfully it’s still the brightest one in the sky. I can find it at a glance.
Starling, Linneya, Eisen, Minks, Pinecone… you must all be happy in Edean. With Lord Julian’s protection, you’ve finally made it through the hard part.
That’s good. Really.
I’ll return to your side as soon as I can. I promise.
—Wyatt, recorded on the eleventh day after leaving Lansen
***
Wyatt began searching clockwise as soon as the Free Will reached the Ring.
As the ship cruised, it released a large number of Observers to comb the route ahead. The Ring’s width was absurd—but at least their target wasn’t small.
After six days of flight, they arrived at the region where Phantom Forge and Miller had last fought.
They searched for three more days. Still nothing.
It made no sense. In that battle alone, Phantom Forge had fielded more than two thousand warships. Wyatt had expected screens full of wreckage—ships, corpses, shattered swarms.
Instead, there wasn’t a single hull to be found. Only endless, fine-grained asteroids.
Wyatt had Veil and Danser confirm the coordinates again and again. Both insisted the location was correct.
Dorian and Big Blue, however, noticed something off. The asteroids here were smaller than elsewhere, their broken faces sharper—as if they were fresh fragments from larger bodies, shattered not long ago.
In other words: a battle really had happened here.
For once, the two of them agreed immediately.
Sampling confirmed it. Many fragments were still radioactive. Some bore laser-scorch marks. Others showed signs of corrosion.
So where had the ships gone? Had not a single one been damaged?
Wyatt’s confusion only deepened. He told Veil to increase the number and frequency of Observers, and to widen the search radius.
Five hours later, something finally changed.
“Captain Wyatt,” Veil said. “An unexpected incident.”
“What is it? Did you find something?” Wyatt asked.
“No. I lost the link to an Observer. Serial number SN-076.”
“Lost link? Did it transmit anything before it went dark?”
“No. But I can pinpoint its last position.” As Veil spoke, the coordinates appeared on the star-map table.
Danser read them out immediately. “Ten o’clock. Distance: 463 kilometers.”
“Veil—recall the other Observers. Stay cloaked. Low speed to that coordinate,” Wyatt ordered.
“Orders received, Captain.”
A few minutes later, the ship crept into the region. It was still empty—nothing but darkness.
But as they drew closer, Wyatt spotted the problem. Ahead, a spherical patch of space showed a faint distortion in the light.
From far away it was subtle. Up close, it was undeniable.
When they were about three kilometers out, Wyatt ordered the ship to halt.
“That’s a big one,” Dorian muttered.
Big Blue squinted. “Could it be the Sky Shield?”
“Impossible,” Danser said. “It’s bigger than a ship.”
Wyatt studied the distortion. “Ships cloak themselves by bending light. This… feels different.”
After a brief silence, Danser spoke first. “Yeah. I see it now. It has mass. It’s like… a black balloon.”
Big Blue frowned. “Then what’s with the starlight on it?”
“Look closer,” Danser said. “It’s like an image being projected.”
“Veil. Circle the target. Slow,” Wyatt ordered.
“Orders received.”
As the Free Will drifted around it, the object stood out more clearly against the backdrop of space.
The “starlight” on its surface was crude—wrong star counts, wrong positions. A bad imitation.
No one understood it. If something was trying to hide, this kind of clumsy camouflage would only fool an enemy at long range.
Wyatt decided to send another Observer in for a closer look—and insisted on piloting it himself.
Veil complied at once. An Observer was launched.
Wyatt guided it toward the sphere while streaming the feed back to the ship.
The closer it got, the more transparent the sphere became. At its center, a polygonal core emerged.
The Observer stopped ten meters out. At this distance the sphere looked less like a solid object and more like a translucent film.
Through it, Wyatt could even make out shapes moving rapidly inside—though everything remained smeared and indistinct.
He edged closer.
Five meters. Four. Three…
The Observer crawled forward as slowly as a snail.
Then, at two meters, the film suddenly surged like a sticky net and slapped onto it, gluing it in place.
In the next instant, the fast-moving shapes inside all stopped at once.
That wasn’t supposed to happen.
Wyatt yanked the controls, trying to back away. The film stretched, but it wouldn’t let go.
Inside, several shadows peeled away and rushed straight toward the trapped Observer.
Wyatt made a decision and drove forward instead.
The film tore open with a rip, and the Observer punched through the gap.
It only managed a single glimpse—then it exploded in a burst of sparks.
The connection died instantly.