"Let’s see what’s behind the curtain," Hye said, his curiosity finally beginning to outweigh his worry. He felt the old thrill of the unknown, the sa vibes that had carried him through the apocalypse.
The first instruction from Moth was a shock: he was to completely deactivate his ship’s shields and defensive systems. It was an absurd, vulnerable request, but Moth explained that the automated sniffers in the rock belt would detect any active energy signatures as a hostile breach, triggering an imdiate and overwhelming offensive.
Reluctantly, Hye reached out and flipped the master switches. The hum of the shield generators died, leaving him sitting in a thin hull of carbon-composite, a completely defenceless ship. Then, Moth sent an even more bizarre command.
[Kill the engines. Let the ship float using only its residual montum to pass through the rock belt.]
[What?!!!] Hye stared at the screen in disbelief. [Are you joking? Without thrust, passing through a belt of this density will take... Like... Forever! I’ll be a sitting duck!]
[It’s our defensive protocol, and you need to follow my words to avoid anything unnecessary!] Moth’s ssage popped up with coldness that did nothing to soothe Hye’s nerves.
Outside the viewport, the ship drifted at a crawl. Massive, jagged chunks of obsidian-colored rock lood like silent tombstone markers. To Hye, it looked like a graveyard of giants, and his ship was moving with all the grace of a leaf caught in a stagnant pond.
"Tsk!" Hye hissed, his hands hovering over the deactivated flight controls. He watched as a particularly sharp spire of rock, easily the size of a skyscraper, drifted toward his cockpit. It seed inevitable. In a vacuum, without thrust, he was at the rcy of the initial montum he had been allowed.
[Dammit, Moth! The ship is going to crash into a group of rocks! I need to steer it away right now!]
[Don’t!] Moth’s reply ca through instantly, though Hye could almost feel the weight of the Hescos’ inward sigh across the vast distance. [You’ll get it once you pass through this zone. Just stick to my words and don’t do anything extra! If you fire a single thruster, you are dead.]
"Damn!" Hye spat. He didn’t know if Moth held a secret grudge or if this was so elaborate Hescos ritual of psychological torture, but he wasn’t going to die sitting in a pilot’s chair. To make himself safe, he reached into his inventory and pulled out a high-grade space suit. He was preparing for the violent decompression he was certain was coming.
The crash ca.
He saw the jagged surface of a massive boulder rush toward his glass, filling his field of vision. He braced for the bone-shattering impact, the screech of tearing tal, and the explosive venting of oxygen.
Yet, he felt nothing at all.
There was no jolt. No vibration. It was as if the ship had hit a wall of soft velvet. Hye blinked, stunned, as he watched the rocks in front of his ship begin to behave like a fluid.
They didn’t shatter; they stuck to the outer shell of his vessel like iron filings to a magnet. Within seconds, the black stone had crawled over every inch of his viewport, totally covering the ship and blocking his field of vision. He was entombed in a ball of floating rock.
"At least it didn’t crash... Wait, why is the ship accelerating?!"
Just as he was about to reach for his internal sensors to see what was happening to his hull, he felt a sudden, sickening tug of G-force. The ship wasn’t just drifting anymore; it was gaining incredible speed and montum. He could feel the vessel banking—moving right and left in a series of complex, high-velocity manoeuvres.
[I didn’t do anything!] he hurriedly ssaged Moth, his heart hamring against his ribs. [But my ship is accelerating! It’s moving on its own!]
[It’s the rocks. Don’t panic, this is all normal!] Moth’s words finally flicked a switch in Hye’s mind. He began to piece together the brilliant, terrifying logic behind the Hescos’ defensive periter. The rocks were the propulsion system. They were a living, reactive defence grid.
If an intruder approached with shields on, the rocks would likely turn hostile, sensing the energy signature and either detonating or acting as teorites to smash the intruder to pieces.
But by shutting down everything, Hye’s ship had been accepted as part of the mass. The rocks had latched on, and now they were acting as a biological or magnetic tug, whisking his silent, dark ship through the belt at speeds he never could have navigated safely on his own.
He envisioned the rock belt as a vast field of dormant landmines, peaceful as long as they were undisturbed, but capable of absolute erasure the mont a trigger—like a shield or an engine—was detected.
"That’s why he kept telling to follow his words to the letter," Hye mused, a slow, predatory grin spreading across his face. He forgot his fear for a mont, his mind already drifting toward how he could adapt this for his own kingdom. "If I can mass produce this, on a huge scale, then protecting my vast territory won’t be that impossible..."
Yet, he knew such a defensive system would cost more than he could currently afford to offer. The sophistication was staggering; it was the kind of technology that made other races look like children playing with sticks.
[Now, it’s ti to do sothing new!] Moth’s ssage appeared after several hours of drifting in total darkness. During that ti, Hye’s radar had been completely flatlined, likely jamd by the very rocks encasing him.
[Start your engine, then prepare to take down the rocks!]
[What are you saying?!] Hye did a double-take. He had to read the ssage three tis to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating. [You want to start the engine and open fire inside your holand territory? Is that... normal?! I thought that was the trigger for death!]
[That’s the way!] Moth paused, and for a mont, the text seed to carry the weight of a grim reality. [And from this mont on, anything you spot—fire and kill. No questions asked.]
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