Chapter 8: The Captain’s Ultimatum

At 3:17 AM, when the emergency lights in the maintenance bay suddenly shifted to a deep orange, Xia Qing was standing at the tactical display, verifying the navigational parameters for the dark matter cloud zone. The alarm sounded like a thin needle, piercing precisely into the nerves at the back of her neck—a Level 3 alert triggered only when core equipment was being tampered with.

"Report the source." Her voice was two degrees lower than usual, her fingers already resting on the laser pistol at her waist.

"The entanglement collider in the quantum communication array," the communication officer, Xiao Zhou, replied, his voice visibly trembling. "Dismantling logs show three unauthorized operations between 10:00 PM last night and 1:00 AM. Tech Chief Lao Chen says... the model of the tools matches the batch stolen from the Lunar Base last month."

Xia Qing’s pupils contracted into thin lines. She remembered when Oleg boarded the ship five days ago; among his entourage of "security auditors" was a thin man in gold-rimmed glasses who was always loitering outside the communication bay. She had had her guards stop him twice, but he had merely brandished a special permit from the United Government, his eyes behind the lenses shifting like slippery fish.

"Locate Oleg." She ripped off her tactical belt, her combat boots striking the metal floor with the sound of a rapid-fire string of steel beads.

The door to the observation bay was glowing with a soft blue halo when she arrived—the automatic climate control maintaining a 30°C simulated Earth environment, as Oleg always claimed "the elderly need a bit of warmth." Xia Qing didn't bother with the doorbell; she used her captain’s clearance to override the lock.

The man in the charcoal-gray suit was standing with his back to the door, facing the panoramic viewport. Outside, the dark matter cloud churned; within the purplish-black clouds, fluorescent blue electrical discharges erupted periodically, like some colossal beast exhaling stardust. He held a mug from which the aroma of coffee drifted, the condensation on the cup’s exterior trickling down between his fingers.

"Captain Xia," Oleg’s voice held the rasp of someone just woken, yet there was no trace of panic. "Dropping by at this hour hardly fits your 'precise-to-the-second' routine."

When Xia Qing’s laser pistol pressed against the back of his neck, he didn't even flinch. The heat of the weapon module radiated through his suit fabric like a piece of red-hot iron.

"The 'expert' you sent is dismantling my communication core." Her thumb slowly disengaged the safety. "The serial numbers on the dismantling tools match perfectly with those lost from the Lunar Base."

Oleg smiled, his coffee cup casting a wavering shadow on the viewport. "That was to give humanity an extra card at the negotiating table—surely you don't actually believe the tears of those energy beings?" He turned his face; his silver hair shimmered coldly in the luminescence of the dark matter cloud. "Lin Shen’s resonance experiment last week—did you really think the Dream-Weaver clan wasn't reading our emotions? They know our hunger for stellar energy, they know our home planet’s ecosystem hasn't recovered, they know..."

"Enough." Xia Qing pushed the pistol forward another half-inch. "The 'Law of Civilizational Contact' is explicit: reverse-engineering intermediate civilization technology triggers an exclusivity protocol. Do you want to expose Earth’s coordinates to the Star Hunters?"

"Those are just fairy tales told by conservatives to scare children." Oleg set down his cup and tapped his knuckles against the viewport, the projection of the dark matter cloud flickering across his face. "Where was the law when the asteroid hit the Pacific twenty years ago? Where was it when the Arctic ice caps melted thirty years ago? Now that we have a chance to obtain the core code of quantum communication, we could enable real-time contact between our Mars colony and Earth, and allow medical bays at the Lunar Base to receive remote surgical guidance from Earth—"

"So you’re willing to gamble the safety of the entire Ark?" Xia Qing’s teeth ground together. "Do you have any idea what Lin Shen discovered on the star chart when communication cut out earlier? The disturbance trajectory of the dark matter cloud matches the Dyson membrane expansion pattern of the Star Hunters exactly as the Dream-Weavers described. If they detect us tampering with their technology now..."

"And what if they do?" Oleg turned abruptly, the muzzle of the laser pistol grazing his Adam’s apple. "The Star Hunters want stellar energy; we can’t even build a Dyson membrane. It’s those Dream-Weavers—" He pointed toward the void outside the viewport. "They call themselves survivors, yet the number of stellar corpses sealed in their light cocoons is three times greater than the volume of Star Hunter activity observed by humanity. Have you never considered that their so-called 'collection' is actually just another form of plunder?"

Xia Qing’s breath hitched. The image of the light cocoons Emil had displayed in Chapter 4 flashed back into her mind—thousands of translucent cocoons suspended in stardust, each containing a curled-up, dark-purple stellar corpse. When Lin Shen had scanned them with a spectrometer, she had stared at that data all night, always feeling that the energy decay curves of the corpses were too uniform, as if they had been cut by some precision instrument.

"You sent your technical officer to hack my access logs," she said, her voice turning soft. "So you knew about Lin Shen’s spectral analysis results."

"I simply did what a politician should do." Oleg stepped back half a pace, the threat of the laser pistol diminishing accordingly. "Humanity needs to survive, and survival requires chips. Do you really think that empath named Emil cares about us? During last week’s resonance experiment, Lin Shen’s emotional fluctuation reached 78%, but do you know what the feedback from the Dream-Weavers was?" He pulled a holographic chip from his inner suit pocket. "32%. They are empathizing, but they are also calculating."

Xia Qing’s temples throbbed. After the memory resonance experiment in Chapter 6, she had indeed asked the medical officer to pull the brainwave data—Lin Shen’s alpha waves had nearly broken through the safety threshold, while the emotional index of the Dream-Weavers recorded by the quantum communication device had indeed remained in the lower green zone. She had comforted herself by blaming it on technical error, but now...

"So you sent your people to dismantle the communication core, hoping to extract the underlying code of the entanglement matrix." She tightened her grip on the trigger again. "Do you realize this could cause the quantum entanglement state to collapse? If our connection to the Dream-Weavers is severed, we won't even be able to confirm the exact coordinates of Alpha Centauri, and the *Ark* will drift in the dark matter cloud until we die."

"That’s why I only had them dismantle the peripheral modules." Oleg spread his hands. "The power draw is set very low; it won't affect current communications. Once we have the code, we can replicate an independent quantum communication device, maintaining our link with the Dream-Weavers while simultaneously..."

"While simultaneously being able to counter them with their own technology if negotiations break down." Xia Qing finished for him. "You don't care about coexistence at all; you only care if humanity can be the stronger party."

"Is there something wrong with being strong?" Oleg’s voice deepened. "At the end of the 21st century, I was the mayor of Vladivostok, watching the sea water rise over the dome of the City Hall. People said, 'We must coexist with nature,' but what was the result? Three hundred thousand died in the floods, my wife included. Since then, I’ve understood—" He poked his chest emphatically. "Coexistence is the fantasy of the weak; survival is the first law of civilization."

Xia Qing’s pistol trembled. She remembered when she was twelve, during the asteroid defense war, when debris shattered the dome of the Lunar Base. She recalled the hiss of her mother’s ruptured protective suit as she shielded her with her own body. *Survival*—the word had never been warm in her memory; it was the sound of alarms, the feel of oxygen masks, the ice crystals formed by blood in a vacuum.

"So you can betray the trust of the entire ship?" Her voice cracked. "There are eight hundred crew members on the *Ark*, scientists like Lin Shen, new recruits like Xiao Zhou who just turned twenty. By what right do you make decisions for them?"

"By the right of being the Vice Chairman of the Human United Government." Oleg’s gaze swept over the rank insignia on her shoulder. "And by the fact that you are a soldier, and a soldier’s duty is to obey."

Xia Qing suddenly laughed, a light, brittle sound that felt like ice picks stabbing into metal. She released her thumb from the trigger and let the laser pistol hang at her side, but her other hand had already pressed onto the tactical tablet at her waist.

"Do you know the emergency ejection procedure?" She pulled up the operating interface, the red "Eject" button pulsing on the screen. "The *Ark*’s isolation bay has independent thrusters. As long as I enter the code, I can eject an unauthorized 'passenger' in thirty seconds."

Oleg’s expression finally shifted. "You can't do this. The orders of the United Government..."

"The orders of the United Government are for me to bring the *Ark* safely to the Dream-Weaver homeworld." Xia Qing’s fingertip hovered over the confirm button. "And you are currently threatening the core of the mission. According to Article 17 of the Starship Emergency Regulations, the captain has the authority to take necessary measures against personnel endangering navigational safety."

The dark matter cloud outside the viewport churned more violently, the purplish-black masses wrapped in fluorescent blue electricity, like a beast slowly waking. Oleg’s shadow was stretched long, nearly touching Xia Qing’s combat boots.

"Three days." Her voice was like frozen iron. "Have your people withdraw from the communication bay and hand over all dismantled modules within three days. Otherwise, I will initiate the ejection procedure and report to the United Government that you were tampering with starship equipment due to a 'sudden mental disorder'."

"You are..."

"This is an ultimatum." Xia Qing turned toward the hatch, holstering her laser pistol. "By the way—Lin Shen is restarting the quantum communication system this morning. If your tools are still in the collider, I wouldn't mind letting everyone on the ship see what kind of beautiful fireworks your 'bargaining chip' turns into when the entanglement state collapses."

As the hatch closed behind her, she heard the brittle sound of Oleg’s mug smashing against the floor. The luminescence of the dark matter cloud filtered through the viewport, casting flowing purple stains on the metal floor, like blood that had yet to dry.

Back on the bridge, the dawn-like light was spilling down from the simulated skylight—a holographic projection of Earth’s morning, designed to maintain the crew's circadian rhythms. Lin Shen stood at the tactical screen, clutching a sheet of printout paper, a thin mist fogging his lenses.

"Captain Xia," his voice held an unusual urgency. "The latency index of the quantum communication suddenly dropped by 12%. I had Xiao Zhou check the collider, and he found..."

"I know." Xia Qing interrupted him, her gaze scanning the green data jumping on the tactical screen. "Oleg’s people dismantled the peripheral modules. But it’s fine now."

Lin Shen pushed up his glasses, the mist blurring into a smudge. "You... talked to him?"

"I talked to him." Xia Qing walked to the command chair and sat down, her fingers tapping a rhythmic pattern on the console. "In three days, everything that shouldn't be there will be gone."

Lin Shen didn't speak again. He stared at the churning dark matter cloud outside the window, suddenly recalling the emotions Emil had transmitted during the resonance experiment in Chapter 6—besides the grief for the stellar corpses, there had been a trace of subtle, lingering vigilance. He had thought it was his imagination at the time, but now...

"Captain Xia," he handed her the printout paper, which showed the spectral analysis of the dark matter cloud. "Look here—" His fingertip pointed to an anomalous purple zone. "The similarity to the dark matter disturbance patterns near the Dream-Weaver homeworld is 91%."

Xia Qing’s pupils contracted into thin lines again. She thought of what Oleg had said about the "three times higher number of stellar corpses," the rippling projections of Emil, and the way the dark matter cloud had churned in the observation bay moments ago.

"Prepare for an all-ship meeting." She pressed the intercom button. "Assemble on the bridge in twenty minutes."

Outside the window, the electricity of the dark matter cloud suddenly flashed violently, like an ancient signal traversing the stardust. Xia Qing looked at the rolling purple-black, suddenly remembering a documentary she had watched at the Lunar Base when she was a child—a swarm of krill gathering in the deep sea, emitting ghostly blue light, until they were swallowed whole by a whale.

And they, at this moment, were swimming in the deep sea of the universe.