Isana giggled. Suddenly, she remembered something and patted my arm. "Oh, right. Your Majesty, have you heard about the Specter Ship?"
"Specter Ship?" I was stunned by Missy Yu's sudden question. Then, I thought about her race and nodded in understanding. "Oh, you're talking about the legends of those old, tattered, and unmanned ships that drift on the sea, never to be found, right? There are so many legends about the Specter Ship. You mermaids care about it too? Don't tell me you guys made those ships? "
"No, it's not that kind of Specter Ship." Isana had a habit of wagging her tail when she was anxious. I could hear her tapping her tail on the floor. "When I was young, I liked to search for treasures in shipwrecks … Eh, it has nothing to do with this. I'm talking about a popular legend in the macro world. It's said that an Imperial Army spaceship that was retreating from the battlefield fell behind. The general and soldiers on the spaceship went missing. The spaceship then floated back to the Empire District under the control of the central computer. Since it couldn't find a port, it kept floating around in different universes, becoming a Specter Ship. Occasionally, people who traveled through the galaxy saw that huge spaceship. They said that the Specter Ship was dead. There were only a few lights on the spaceship, and the engine was so dim that it looked like it was about to go out. The spaceship was tattered and damaged. If you were close enough, you could even see the dark corridors inside the spaceship through the cracks. But no one could board the spaceship because no one dared to go near it. Also, the Specter Ship always disappeared suddenly. It was as if the central computer was still trying to find a port. Many people said that they had seen the ship, especially the old crew members of the merchant caravans that transported supplies for the servant army. They all said that they had seen the ghost ship, but most people didn't have any evidence, so they were probably just bragging. "
Isana excitedly told the story of the Specter Ship. At first, I paid more attention, thinking that it was some important information. But as I listened, I slowly realized that it was basically a space version of Adventures of the Sailor, just like the stories that old sailors from the sailing era would brag about in port pubs while puffing out the smell of alcohol. In the past, the superstitious old sailors liked to brag about their adventures with sea monsters and ghost ships. But now, the bored crew members who traveled between the stars had a more advanced topic of conversation: Interstellar Ghost Ships, or even Void Ghost Ships.
The story was quite creative. They directly used the Imperial Army ships as the background of the story. This gimmick must be very cool. In the eyes of most civilians in the Macro World and the Spawn Tribes, the Imperial Army spaceships were almost legendary, especially large spaceships. Most people had only seen them in brochures and on screens. They longed for those powerful Empire machines, just like a sixteenth-century teenager longing for a 55-meter-long battleship with 18-pound cannons. But the huge ships wouldn't cruise around the village. Eighty to ninety percent of the people didn't have the chance to go to the Empire base to see what the Eternal Class looked like. Many people couldn't even go to space for the rest of their lives. So, when the old crew members who had been to space or even traveled between worlds returned to the surface, the Specter Ship story, mixed with alcohol and adrenaline, became popular.
Isana immediately noticed that I wasn't interested in the story. I heard a flapping sound under her chair again. It was the fish-girl wagging her tail again. She looked at me unhappily. "The Specter Ship might not be fake, right? Although there must be people who are bragging, there are dozens of worlds with the legend of the Specter Ship! "
"The Imperial Army spaceship is lost? And the navigation system can be turned on, but it can't lead the way? And in the end, it still drifts around the Empire? " I couldn't help but laugh. "Not to mention, none of the outposts have detected the signal of this spaceship. It's not that I want to spoil your fairy tale, but it's really impossible. Our spaceships have several backup navigation systems, and there's a 'Catastrophic Damage Identification Protocol' between them. If all the navigation systems fail, the spaceship will immediately jump into a stable universe and lock the engine. This is to prevent the spaceship from flying into the enemy's territory without any navigation system, which would lead to information leakage. Furthermore, I didn't believe that all the officers and soldiers on the spaceship had gone missing. The Imperial Army had a clear operational procedure for 'abandoning and evacuating'. Unless all the soldiers died in the spaceship before evacuating, the military would never allow a spaceship to be 'lost' just like that. They would either immediately retrieve the spaceship, destroy it before it was captured, or the captain would self-destruct the spaceship before evacuating. In any case, we wouldn't allow a spaceship to float out of our sight just like that. Also, the identification signal transmitter on the spaceship is as sturdy as a black box. If there is a Specter Ship, the local outposts of the Empire would have discovered it long ago. "
Isana listened to my explanation in a daze. She lowered her head dejectedly. "Why don't your technicians save face for Dream?"
I was speechless. This concerns the interests of the country and the outcome of the war. How can they save face?
"But someone really did submit the video of the encounter with the Specter Ship to the military." Isana thought for a moment and suddenly became excited. "Not only the video, but also the spaceship's log. It's said that one of the people who encountered the Specter Ship was an officer of the servant army. He was driving his private spaceship for a spin when he encountered the thing. That's the most popular story. It can't be fake, right?"
"Huh?" I was serious now. "There's such a thing?"
Isana nodded vigorously. The two white-bearded old men across the table also nodded. It seemed that they had also heard of these 'stories' in the Macro World.
I fell into deep thought. With the video, the spaceship's log, and even the eyewitness record of a servant army officer, if a mere 'Specter Ship' story is so detailed, then it's probably not as simple as a rumor.
Could it be that it's the same 'Specter Ship' that encountered the exiled fleet in the Macro World? Could it be another spaceship from the Old Empire that drifted into the void? But this time, it's not an exiled race, but an out-of-control battleship from the Old Empire?
"I'll go back and check what's going on. I'll see if the military has any official eyewitness reports." I nodded at Isana and turned to look outside. It was getting late, and the streets were already lit with lanterns. I stood up and said, "I'll go back first. Make yourself at home."
Isana waved her hand. "It's inconvenient for me to jump. I won't see you out."
I was speechless.
Before I left, I suddenly saw the two white-bearded old men again and remembered something important. "You two better not stay out too late. The Military Academy is closed at night, and you two are still students …"
"Don't worry, I'll teleport in," White-Bearded Old Man No. 1 said. White-Bearded Old Man No. 2 nodded. "I'll climb over the wall."
As an academy whose ultimate goal was to improve its students' strength, the Imperial Army Military Academy had a rule: Regardless of whether you climbed over the wall or skipped class, whether you cheated or left early, as long as you used your own methods and didn't get found out by the teachers, you wouldn't be punished. If you voluntarily confessed after the incident, you might even get extra points. Thus, I smiled and nodded at the two old men. "Good luck."
I sent a message to the Military Academy's Security Department the moment I stepped out of the door. "Tonight, the academy will tighten up the lockdown. All the walls will be powered up. Also, activate the Space Confinement Field to the stratosphere …"
I felt refreshed after I hung up. I could faintly feel how my teaching director felt when I was in Second High School. So this feeling was really good …
Today, I returned home later than usual. However, as long as I didn't say that I was going to eat outside, my family would wait for me to eat with them. There was a large circle of people sitting around the signature huge dining table. It looked like a small banquet. The only empty seat was between Pandora and Visca. It seemed that the two sisters had fought with others to get this precious spot. The first thing I did when I sat down was to pinch the sisters' cheeks as a sign of intimacy. Then, I took out the two wild Jingle Puppies who were dozing off on the plate in front of me and put them aside. This meal was going to be accompanied by another thirty to fifty goddesses. There were already a few clever little ones who landed on the shoulders of the big sister or Uncle Kenser, waiting for someone to feed them.
"You're finally back!" A scolding voice came from my right across from Pandora, but I couldn't see anyone. I looked over and saw a Gothic puppet that was only a few tens of centimeters tall sitting on a chair. She was holding a knife and fork that was a size too small in protest. Due to her body size, if she really sat down, she would be surrounded by the chair's backrest and armrests. That's why she had a large pile of books under her butt. It made people worry that she would fall off. Of course, Pandora and Visca also had books under them …
"I met an acquaintance." I explained to the little girl. The moment I raised my chopsticks, I remembered that I went back and forth in the teahouse with a stomach full of water and pastries. "Uhh …"
"Master, what's wrong? Is the food bad? " Anveena's head immediately popped out from the soup bowl in front of me. It seemed to be steaming hot. "Master's favorite today is chives stuffed buns."
I looked at a ghostly head floating on the table, but I was already used to it. I smiled awkwardly and said, "No, I ate some pastries before coming here. I'm not that hungry."
As I spoke, Sandora had already finished her third bowl of porridge.
"Speaking of which … Sandora, do you know anything about the Specter Ship?" I recalled what Isana had told me before. I looked up at Sandora. She forcefully swallowed a bun and rolled her eyes. She mumbled, "Oh, Specter Ship?"
"It's said that an Imperial Army spaceship of unknown origin appeared in the Macro World." I picked out the stuffing from the bun and fed it to Jingle and a wild Jingle that I didn't know. Otherwise, they wouldn't know that there was stuffing in the bun even if they ate until they were full. I said slowly, "It's been rumored to be mysterious. Many interstellar travelers have said that they've seen that ship. According to the description, it should be a large mothership, but it doesn't look like an Eternal Grade one. The spaceship is severely damaged, and it doesn't have active signals. It doesn't accept calls, but it still has the ability to travel across worlds. At first, I thought it was some urban legend, but I heard that there were even records of officers in the servant army. So, I wanted to ask if you've heard of it. "
"I've heard of it. There were people who reported it to the military, and there was indeed a report from the servant army." Sandora nodded. I immediately stopped what I was doing. "There's really a Specter Ship?!"
Seeing that no one was feeding them, the two goddesses carried two toothpicks and ran off to look for their own food.
"It's hard to say whether it's true or not. There are indeed flight logs and video files, but the investigation team sent by the Imperial Army and all the surveillance stations didn't capture any direct evidence. So, it's still an unsolved case." Sandora shook her head. "I can only say that it's highly suspected. I have more detailed information here. The sighting report mentioned that the Specter Ship was a special model that wasn't recorded in the Empire's active spaceship inventory, but it had obvious Schilling characteristics. The Specter Ship was larger than an Eternal Grade spaceship, and it was a giant interstellar spaceship of more than a hundred kilometers long. But because of the damage to its bow, it wasn't clear how big it was when it was in good condition. The spaceship could have been modified from an Eternal Grade spaceship, or it could have incorporated parts of an Eternal Grade spaceship. The first half of the spaceship looked like the charging section of a Galaxy Cannon. In addition, the surface power supply network of the Specter Ship should have been paralyzed. The officer who witnessed it risked his life to get close to the Specter Ship to test the latter's outer equipment and found that all its peripherals were not turned on. But before the reinforcements that the officer called for arrived, the Specter Ship seemed to have sensed something and suddenly jumped out of the world. Oh yes, you were in the divine realm when the report of the Specter Ship was submitted, so it's normal that you don't know about it. Fox, give me the vinegar. "
A big furry tail wrapped around the vinegar pot and stretched across the table to Sandora. On the way back, it also took a bun with it. The fox fairy had more and more functions.
Sandora shared a part of the report of the Specter Ship with me. I looked at the sighting pictures taken in a hurry on my MDT. Most of these pictures came from civilian eyewitness accounts. Each picture came with a note, and the eyewitnesses ranged from workers on cargo ships to tourists on commercial cruisers. I even saw the words "lumei920" at the bottom of one of the pictures. Of course, some of the pictures were captured by the ship's automatic observation device, so the image would be clearer.
Most of the pictures were not taken at a good angle, and due to the hasty zooming in, the images were distorted. There was one picture that was very oppressive. A large silver-gray and devastated armor belt occupied almost three-quarters of the picture. The witness who took this picture had a heart attack and was sent to the infirmary because the Specter Ship spawned directly less than a hundred meters away from the spacecraft he was in.
It took me a lot of effort to piece together these fragmented sighting pictures from various angles. After a long time, I roughly guessed the overall appearance of the Specter Ship: a broken Empire starship with a bow similar to the Eternal-class starship. The rear half was a three-layered hull arranged in parallel. The main armor belt was silver-gray, and the remaining quarter was painted black. The emblem of the Imperial Army could be seen in the middle of the ship, but the part with the emperor's private emblem seemed to have been lost along with the hull. So, Sandora could not tell who the ship once belonged to.
Then, I flipped to the end of the information and was surprised to see a complete picture of the Specter Ship with tens of millions of pixels, followed by a short video.
I: "…"
Anyway, the existence of the Specter Ship was most likely real, and it looked like my guess was right: it was a lost starship from the Old Empire era. After all, the New Empire did not make such a ship, and it obviously did not belong to the Fallen Apostle. The biggest problem now was that the ship did not release any signals, and we could not rule out the possibility that all the passengers were missing. It was certainly impossible to establish contact with it using conventional means. Moreover, it was running around everywhere. Catching such a spaceship in countless universes was as difficult as looking for Jingle in the Inner Mongolian Steppe. How frustrating.
I could only wait for more eyewitness reports to come out to summarize the pattern of the Specter Ship's appearance. After reading the reports, I felt that the ship seemed to have some kind of pattern. After all, the universe was so big, but it happened to pass by other spaceships many times. It should not be pure coincidence.
I put the matter of the Specter Ship aside for the time being. After dinner, Big Sister and Anveena were busy packing up. Lin, who wanted to help, was ordered to watch from the side as usual. The little ones, except for Pandora, would disappear after dinner. I could not be bothered with them. Anyway, most of them were playing hide-and-seek with the mini Medivh in the yard. They were very fond of playing hide-and-seek.
Shallow Shallow asked for the information about the Specter Ship for a long time, but she soon lost interest in it. She threw the MDT aside and turned on the TV. She changed the channels and finally found an interesting program. It was a translated documentary from abroad, about the habits of foxes.
After eating and drinking, Lady Fox Fairy, who was napping next to me, suddenly woke up. Her ears perked up as she listened to the TV. Shallow Shallow watched the TV for a while. Suddenly, she had an idea. "Ah Jun, Ah Jun, what do you think a fox calls?"
I thought about it and thought that this was a really difficult question to answer. It seems that not many people have heard of the sound of a fox. Of course, if you said "Great Chu Xing, Chen Sheng Wang", then it would be considered as destroying the scene. What exactly is the sound of a fox?
This question completely drove away the messy thoughts about the Specter Ship from my mind. I frowned and thought for a long time until a big golden tail playfully curled around my neck. Then, I suddenly understood. There was a fox next to me!
You couldn't blame me for my slow reaction. It was mainly because besides her ears and tail, Lady Fox Fairy looked like a girl. Even if she was lying next to me, I did not connect Shallow Shallow's question with her.
"Fox, what do you usually call?" I patted Lady Fox Fairy's tail.
The fox girl looked at me in confusion. She hesitated for a while and carefully said, "Wah! ← ← ← Like this? "
I was stunned. "… I asked you how a fox calls, not how you call when you're in human form!"
The second big tail patted my face. The fox girl stretched lazily. "I haven't called for a thousand years. I forgot."
I was speechless.
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