Chapter 3905 Fish-Whale Theories
When the scout ship assigned to monitor and study Garimel I reported that the planet's surface was beginning to crack, many different alarms set off at once!
In the long experiences of human civilization, calamity always arrived after a planet that should ordinarily be relatively stable suddenly produced major tectonic activity.
What was happening on the surface of the planet that Ves had whimsically called Auralis was far outside the boundaries of normal activity!
Sure, the planet behaved oddly due to its proximity to the blue supergiant star along with all of the heavy materials making up its structure, but for its surface to crack to such an obvious degree was excessive!
It was hard to imagine that this was a coincidence, especially when the Cerebral King broke into the Royal Tomb just a short time ago. Any fool could figure out that the two events were intricately connected!
"Damnit, hurry up with our evacuation! Leave behind all of our stuff. They're just junk that we can easily replace!"
As shuttles and transports continued to rejoin the fleet, the various carriers began to deploy mechs in case their protection was needed.
Venerable Joshua, Venerable Tusa and Commander Casella barely had time to rest before they needed to bring their expert mechs back out into space in order to secure the expeditionary fleet's perimeter.
"What have you all been doing in Purgatory to cause a planet to crack?!" Venerable Jannzi asked as her massive Shield of Samar settled onto the hull of the Gorgoneion.
"I don't know!" Venerable Joshua replied in an exasperated tone. "What are you asking me, Jannzi?"
"You and the rest of the task force just completed an excursion where Ves has resided in the cockpit of your expert mech all the time! I don't believe you know nothing about what our patriarch has been up to these last few days."
"Look, I just played the role of a chauffeur, right? We hardly talked about anything important while he sat behind me. We just reminisced about the past, that's all. He didn't discuss any of his important plans with me. Why should he? I'm just an expert pilot."
His ex-girlfriend sneered. "Oh? And what is this I hear about your Everchanger flying around while expert candidates and expert pilots are suddenly popping up left and right?"
"Jannzi! I don't think we should talk about confidential mission details over a remote communication channel! If you want answers, I think you should wait until all of this is over."
The female mech pilot took a deep breath and sighed. "You're right. I am letting my impatience get the better of me. Many of the mech pilots in our clan are celebrating the fact that Vincent, Isobel and many others have successfully broken through, do you know that? What I have been paying attention to is the disparity between the amount of mechs that went out as opposed to the amount that got back. Why is there such a large gap? How many pilots have we lost this time?"
"I… can't tell you that much." Joshua replied in a subdued tone. "The battle against the Phaser fish-whales was anything but easy."
The two continued to talk even as the expeditionary fleet finally began to move out.
Normally, exiting a star system was easier than entering one. With ordinary human FTL drives, it was only possible to enter into FTL travel by initiating the translation process in a region of space where gravity or gravitic activity was below a certain threshold.
Most of the time, that meant traveling to the outer edge of the star system. As long as the ships traveled far away enough from any star, the influence of its gravity would drop below a point where FTL travel became possible.
The problem right now was that this range was never fixed. Heavier stars possessed more gravity than lighter ones.
Given that the one in the center of the Garimel System was classified as a supergiant, its mass was definitely not light!
Not only that, but the lack of planets in the star system as well as other risky factors made it unwise to travel to the Lagrange points to leave this place!
"How long before we can get out?" Ves urgently asked.
"It took several days to reach the orbit of Lemogo Distat when we first arrived here. It will take roughly the same amount of time for us to go out. We can't go any faster unless we evacuate and abandon our slower starships such as the Graveyard and the Gorgoneion."
"Damnit!"
Ves had a really bad feeling about what was happening to Auralis. He had the sense that he had gotten caught up in the grand plan concocted by the Flesh Conqueror or another ancient alien mastermind.
Ever since the Cerebral King revealed its true colors and used its own powers to barge into the Royal Tomb, he already came up with a few possible theories to explain what was happening.
In order to distract himself and pass the time in this tense and uncertain period of time, Ves contacted Ranya in order to swap theories on the possible layout of Purgatory and the Royal Tomb.
Getting solid answers was impossible, but it might be possible for him to reduce his uncertainty and gain a better idea of what was going on by deducing the actual story from the clues that they had gathered.
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