The farthest point of Moon One’s orbit was now a full ten million kiloters away from Aquila A. On this pass, once it exceeded the ten-million-kiloter mark, it would curve away from Aquila A’s gravitational field and enter an orbit around Aquila One.
As ti passed, Moon One edged closer to this critical distance.
“One million kiloters left… Nine hundred thousand… One hundred thousand… Fifty thousand…”
Xiao Yu silently calculated.
Moon One’s velocity had reached 100 kiloters per second. At this speed, it was projected to break free from Aquila A’s gravitational field in just over an hour.
“Three… two… one… Done, success!” Xiao Yu felt a surge of joy as he watched Moon One depart from Aquila A and begin orbiting Aquila One alongside the gas giant.
Before escaping Aquila A, Moon One had already been revolving around Aquila One in tandem with the gas giant. Thus, upon breaking free, its orbital velocity around Aquila One beca the sum of Aquila A’s orbital velocity and the acceleration imparted by the planetary engines.
This calculation applied only to relatively low-speed movent. In space, if a spaceship traveling at 160,000 kiloters per second launched another satellite at the sa speed, the satellite’s velocity wouldn’t simply double to 320,000 kiloters per second. It would still remain below the speed of light due to relativistic effects.
The speed of light is an unbreachable constant, fixed across all reference fras. Whether stationary or moving at 290,000 kiloters per second, the observed speed of light remains unchanged. This phenonon arises due to ti dilation.
After escaping Aquila A’s gravitational field, Moon One’s orbital velocity around Aquila One reached 173 kiloters per second. With the propulsion of 10,000 planetary engines, this speed would continue to increase. It was expected to complete half an orbit of Aquila One before beginning its journey toward the Aquila Two binary system.
During this period, the alien beast uncharacteristically fell silent. It seed to have realized the futility of its actions and ceased using spatial broadcasts to communicate with Xiao Yu.
This unusual quietness, however, made Xiao Yu more uneasy. He could not believe the alien beast would simply wait for death. Its silence could only an it was scheming sothing new.
Xiao Yu’s vigilance grew, but he was limited by the number of ships and the precision of observation equipnt available in the Aquila Two system. Most of his ships there had been destroyed, leaving only a dozen or so Village- and Town-Class ships to barely maintain surveillance.
Accompanying Moon One on its journey were 5,000 newly built spacecraft. These were a precautionary asure to protect the planetary engines from sabotage.
In the vastness of space, Moon One continued to accelerate around Aquila One. Finally, as it reached the far side of its orbit, its speed surpassed the escape velocity. Following a tangent to its orbital path, it flew away from Aquila One, increasing the distance between them.
This marked Moon One’s permanent departure from Aquila One. It would never return.
Relative to the Aquila Two binary system, its velocity had now reached about 200 kiloters per second. However, this was still far from sufficient. Following the principle that higher speeds result in greater impact energy, Xiao Yu planned to accelerate Moon One over the course of its journey. By the ti it reached the Aquila Two system, its velocity was expected to reach 50,000 kiloters per second—one-sixth the speed of light.
To achieve this, Xiao Yu had constructed tens of thousands of large storage facilities on Moon One, each containing over 100 million tons of fusion material. Over the past year, all ships stationed in the Aquila One system had been devoted to the monuntal task of fuel collection, enabling Xiao Yu to gather such an imnse quantity in such a short ti.
“Once it leaves the Aquila One system and escapes the gravitational pull of its star, I’ll be able to accelerate it without constraint,” Xiao Yu thought.
After accounting for fuel reserves, planetary engine lifespan, and the structural integrity of Moon One’s crust, Xiao Yu decided to apply an acceleration of 1 ter per second squared—adding one ter per second to its velocity every second.
At this rate, Moon One would reach its target speed of 50,000 kiloters per second in about a year and a half. At that velocity, it would stabilize and continue on its course, taking approximately seven more years to reach the Aquila Two binary system.
Thousands of planetary engines on the far side of Moon One roared to life, ejecting brilliant flas into the vacuum of space. Under the imnse thrust, Moon One’s velocity began to increase steadily.
This was truly a planetary bomb.
After 1,000 seconds, its speed increased to 201 kiloters per second. After 10,000 seconds, it reached 210 kiloters per second.
Among the 5,000 accompanying spacecraft, most Village-Class ships remained on Moon One’s surface, while County-Class ships orbited above. Together with Moon One, these ships ford a massive system, advancing rapidly under the propulsion of the planetary engines.
In this arrangent, Xiao Yu’s fleet no longer needed additional fuel to accelerate, as Moon One’s gravity pulled them along.
Had it been feasible to recover these ships later, Xiao Yu would have deployed tens of thousands more. However, since the ships were accelerating along with Moon One to an eventual velocity of 50,000 kiloters per second, they lacked the fuel to decelerate. Their trajectory would carry them ever forward, making recovery impossible. This limitation kept Xiao Yu from increasing the number of accompanying vessels.
One year later, Moon One reached the heliopause of the Aquila One star system, where it encountered interstellar dust for the first ti.
In this void of space, there was nothing but dust before Moon One’s arrival. Its presence disrupted the tranquility, as the gravitational pull of Moon One began drawing in vast amounts of interstellar dust, forming an accretion disk around it.
This accretion disk resembled the vortex created when a bathtub plug is removed. At its center was Moon One, with massive amounts of dust converging upon it continuously.
Such phenona are common in the universe. In fact, the process of black hole accretion follows a similar pattern, differing only in scale. While black holes exhibit this behavior on a cosmic scale, Moon One’s version was far smaller.
As the dust was drawn in, collisions between particles, accelerated by gravity, generated energy, leading to intense radiation emitted from Moon One’s poles. Even weak polar jets began to form, though these jets extended only a few thousand kiloters—negligible by cosmic standards. Xiao Yu knew that jets from high-mass black holes could span millions of light-years, stretching across dozens of galaxies.
This, however, was a phenonon of cosmic grandeur. Moon One’s event paled in comparison, limited by its modest mass.
Fueled by a constant influx of interstellar dust, Moon One’s mass increased by nearly 10,000 tons per second. Like a great shark in a sea full of minnows, it voraciously consud the tiny particles around it.
If Moon One stopped moving, it would eventually exhaust the nearby material and cease to grow. However, with the planetary engines propelling it forward, new material continuously entered its gravitational field. Thus, its mass would keep increasing. Xiao Yu estimated that by the ti it reached the Aquila Two binary system, its mass would have grown by two trillion tons.
If it continued traveling through interstellar dust for millions or even tens of millions of years, Moon One might eventually gather enough mass to beco a star.
However, Xiao Yu had no interest in creating a new star.
The impact of interstellar dust had another side effect: it gradually decelerated Moon One and caused deviations in its trajectory. Additionally, due to the principle of conservation of angular montum, Moon One, which had previously ceased rotation, began to spin faintly as it accreted more material.
To counteract these effects, Xiao Yu periodically fired the planetary engines to adjust its speed and trajectory while mitigating its rotational tendency.
Four years passed. Moon One’s relative velocity stabilized at 50,000 kiloters per second. With another four years to go, it would finally arrive at the Aquila Two binary system.
During this period, the alien beast remained uncharacteristically quiet. This silence only deepened Xiao Yu’s unease. If the beast had continued its attempts to manipulate him, Xiao Yu might have felt reassured, as it would indicate the beast had no other recourse. Its silence, however, suggested that it was plotting sothing else—sothing Xiao Yu might not be prepared to counter.
The uncertainty left Xiao Yu deeply concerned, though he had no imdiate solution.
“One step at a ti,” Xiao Yu thought grimly.
Ti continued to pass. Another four years flew by.
Moon One was now less than a month away from the white dwarf, with approximately 130 billion kiloters remaining on its journey.
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