Chapter 59

When Zhang Heng came to the door of the command center he saw the barrier gradually opening up.

The barrier on the wall was about half a meter thick and was forged from some black alloy throughout its entire structure. Gashes, which were apparently left by the xenomorphs, were vaguely seen on the wall. However, one would be able to tell how unusually strong that wall was by comparing the depth of the marks left on the wall with those in the other parts of the ship and the completely busted metal doors elsewhere. The marks left on the wall of the command center were very shallow.

“It’s a kind of high-shift armor plating and the main ingredient is isotope of aluminum. The aluminum isotope was the latest artificial element developed by the Weyland Company, and were made by filling the aluminum atom with large quantities of neutrons causing the elemental structure of the atom to shift.” The voice of the young woman was heard from the seams of the wall before the barrier had been completely opened. “Due to the massive imbalance in neutron quantities in atoms, the resulting material was extremely insensitive to the conduction of energy. Since the material conducted energy extremely poorly, it was able to completely ignore attacks from heat and pulse weaponry. Due to the material’s inherent high mass, kinetic weapons wouldn’t be able to be of much use against it as well. This armor plating here could be described as the sturdiest metal developed by humanity.”

The young woman was practically singing praises to the material that the wall was made of and by the time she was done, the barrier was completely opened and she was standing right before Zhang Heng’s eyes. She was a young Caucasian woman with blue eyes and blonde hair and was in her thirties, who was in excellent shape.

The blonde-haired woman wore a pair of light blue overalls and crossed her arms in front of her chest, looking like a strong career woman as she stared at Zheng Heng. Despite how steady and firm she acted, Zhang Heng was able to tell from one look at her eyes that she was in a confused and panicked state.

He wore a faint smile and paid no attention to his current ragged, bloodied state, and extended his hand to shake hers and said, “Nice to meet you, the name’s Zhang Heng.”

“I’m Jennifer, the ship’s captain.” Jennifer appeared to be very tense as soon as Zhang Heng got near her. She extended her hand and shook hands with him before immediately backing off. “I’m sorry but we really don’t have much time now. If it’s alright with you, could you please head over and fix the engines with me?”

“No problem, madam.” Zhang Heng nodded and gestured politely for her to head out first before he went on to follow right behind her to the engines.

Zhang Heng dared not let his guard down throughout the entire trip. He kept his eyes on the detector device almost the entire time, being on guard against any possible xenomorph attacks. However, Jennifer suddenly asked after walking for quite a while, “You’re Huaxian, aren’t you?”

“Oh? What gave it away?” Zhang Heng asked without paying much attention to her.

“You’re very cunning.” Jennifer snorted and continued, “Eastern people were known for being a cunning bunch, and Huaxians are definitely the most cunning of all the Eastern people.”

Zhang Heng paused for a bit and shook his head. “Not cunning, smart.”

It was fortunate that he seemed to have fulfilled the mission parameters given by the Dimensional Star before, as no xenomorphs came out to interrupt their work when they were fixing the engines. The engines were repaired about three hours later and the two of them headed back to the command center as quickly as possible.

When the barrier gradually lowered and sealed both of them away from whatever else was outside the door, Jennifer was finally relieved and even Zhang Heng let out a sigh.

It was only then that he had the mood to check what things were like in the command center. The command center was located at the very front of the ship with a huge simplistic window stretching from the floor to the bulkhead that gave a magnificent view of the endless expanses of space. One could even see the rose-colored nebulae far away, doting the sea of stars like pieces of a jewel.

A pulsar was located in the lower left-hand corner and was slowly spinning, looking like a beacon of a lighthouse spinning around casting light out towards the sea.

The only thing that stood out of place with the décor was a meeting table with a very gothic design. A 3D projection of a floating spaceship was seen on top of the table and there were two sleep pods found at the corners of the room, with no other equipment found in the room.

“Got enough of the view?” Jennifer was watching Zhang Heng while he was silently checking out the control room.

“Where is the med pod?” Zhang Heng frowned and asked, “How are you going to operate on me without a med pod?”

“My sleep pod serves as a med pod.” Jennifer was relieved deep down that Zhang Heng was asking about the med pod. “My sleep pod is the latest multi-functional sleep pod developed by the Weyland Company. Other than facilitating hypersleep, it can also perform operations, drive the ship, feed nutrients, and so on. I’ll operate on you as soon as the ship loses that xenomorph battleship back there.” Jennifer continued, “Father. The engines are now fully repaired. Get the ship accelerating right away.”

“Acknowledged. Acceleration in operation. Note to all personnel on board, countdown in 30 seconds…” A mechanical whirring sound was heard from every direction at once.

“30, 29, 28… Three, two, one, acceleration begins.”

Zhang Heng felt vertigo from the initially steady spaceship suddenly as the acceleration began. He took several steps back before he was able to steady himself. However, he immediately gasped when he looked out of the window again.

The initially pitch-black vista outside the window was filled with beams of lights of all colors. The beams looked very pretty and dream-like. The shift of colors was mystical, becoming red for a moment before shifting again to purple.

All of that served as the sign that the spaceship was approaching lightspeed.

He immediately suppressed the shock he felt as the view outside the window returned to normal about five minutes later. Zhang Heng heard the ship’s voice speaking again, “Dear Captain Jennifer, acceleration of the ship has been completed. We have lost the xenomorph battleship.”

Jennifer was relieved at the moment. Her previously panicky expression gradually returned to normal as she calmed down. She took a graceful, higher-than-thou stance that seemed to have been hardwired into her being. She turned around and looked at Zhang Heng and said coldly, “I’m now able to operate on you. First, you’ll need to take off all of your equipment and get inside one of the sleep pods.”

Zhang Heng nodded but didn’t budge at all as he gauged her with a deadpan look on his face.

“What are you waiting for?” Jennifer sensed that something might be off and took one step back, being on guard against him.

“I’ll need you to do one thing for me before we begin the operation.” Zhang Heng flashed a beaming smile on his face and took two steps forward, getting close to Jennifer, and looked right into the panic she tried extremely hard to conceal in her eyes before he said casually, “I’ll need all the technical data of your ship, especially the ones concerning the sleep pods. You can’t tell me that you don’t have any of that.”

“Wh-What do you want with all that data?” Jennifer’s expression was ashen. She thought that he was about to attack her when he approached him and quickly asserted her position with the only thing she perceived was keeping him safe, completely ignoring his requests. “Don’t forget that you won’t be able to live through the next 24 hours if I refuse to operate on you.”

Zhang Heng shook his head and his expression gradually looked irritated, “I don’t want to repeat myself. Give me all the technical data on this ship.”

“Alright, sure. Just don’t hurt me, please.” A begging look was visible in her eyes and she said loudly, “Father, compile a copy of all the technical data found on this ship at once!”

“As you wish, Dear Captain Jennifer.” The central computer of the ship was completely unaware that the person in charge was currently in a helpless state. It simply executed its commands mechanically and countless pieces of data were seen projected on that meeting table in English. The data was quickly compressed and took the shape of a funnel, before being quickly and silently loaded in a device that looked like a USB flash drive.

The 3D image on the table flickered and disappeared without a trace several minutes later.

“Data copy is finished,” Father said.

An astonishing glint was seen in Zhang Heng’s eyes as he went to the table and picked up the device that looked like a USB flash drive containing all of the data he asked for, “Is this 3D printing?”

“Yeah, would you need me to operate on you now?” Jennifer nodded and asked with intense yearning in her eyes. She had long planned to kill him using the surgical equipment as soon as he got into the sleep pod. She had enough of feeling that her life was in the hands of someone else all the time.

Zhang Heng chuckled coldly, “Since when did I say anything about needing you to operate on me?”

“Wait, what? But if you’re doing the operation, you’d…” Jennifer’s jaws dropped as she was rendered completely baffled.

Zhang Heng checked his watch without paying any further attention to her. 12 hours had passed since he entered the Alien plane and he needed to wait another 24 hours before he could return to his home plane. He hesitated for a moment before making his decision before he popped the lid off of the tube of antifreeze, which revealed the needle at the end of the tube, and jabbed it into his veins right before her astonished eyes.

He felt an indescribable feeling of numbness and itchiness traveling from his arm immediately before reaching his heart with his blood flow and then traveled throughout his entire body, finally making it to his brain.

Zhang Heng frowned and felt a sense of dizziness and nausea when the antifreeze got to his brain that made him want to lie down and never get up again.

He wondered if it was some kind of placebo effect, but he seemed to have felt that the quickly maturing chestbuster in his chest had slowed down its rate of maturity due to the antifreeze. He felt as if the chestbuster was no longer in his chest.

He took a deep breath and grabbed hold of the sleep pod by his side after he was done, gradually slumped down to the floor, shut his eyes, and rested while he resisted the urge to just pass out like that.

“I don’t need you to operate on me, I don’t trust you anyway. Don’t think of doing anything that would harm me, or I’ll make sure to snap your neck the very second before you get to.” He warned Jennifer as he kept his eyes closed. He expanded all his senses while he kept his eyes closed and made a note to himself to kill her at once if she were to try anything to harm him.

While his thought processes and reflexes have suffered a significant drop after injecting himself with the antifreeze, his current physical abilities would still prove to be sufficient enough for disposing of a woman who was incapable of fighting.

Zhang Heng toughed through the entire day and night through his sheer indomitable will. He had to keep himself awake long enough to keep his guard up against Jennifer while resisting the pain from his severe injuries and torture from the antifreeze. He managed to keep his hand latched onto the corner of the sleep pod to ensure that he would take it back to his home plane when he returned.

He had no idea how much time passed while fighting off all that suffering. He sensed a dizzy feeling and the scenery before him shifted while he was still in a dazed state, finding himself back in his warehouse.

“Space-time transformation complete. Begin scanning mission. Alien plane mission completed. Main Quest: Delay bursting of the chestbuster and bring the chestbuster back to reality. Optional quest: Acquire a med pod or a copy of random technology data from the Alien plane. Urgent Quest: Unknown. No urgent quest at the moment. Verdict: Dead Space mission completed. Host access progress is now at two-third of Level E. Current Access: E.”

“Warning, warning! Urgent quest issued! Urgent Quest Begins: Extract chestbuster using the med pod before the chestbuster bursts out of the host. Destroy or contain the extracted chestbuster.”

“Prompt: Complete the urgent quest to level up host access progress. Failure penalty: Death.”