Chapter 1

Jiden stood in front of the large, bright, floor-to-ceiling windows, with a cacophony of noise in the surveillance room behind him. The holographic sand table in the centre of the monitoring room displayed in real time every scene and every object in a 20-kilometre radius of the launch site, and it was possible to see everything, even in minute detail. In accordance with the 1:500 ratio of the spacecraft launchers, busy ground support vehicles, air shuttle helicopters and staff smaller than ants in the sand table are lifelike. The whole sand table is centred on the No.1 main launcher, surrounded by 5 smaller secondary launchers, 15 tertiary launchers, dozens of supporting buildings of varying heights, and the tall glass building marked in red in the southwest direction of the launch site. This is the nerve centre of the entire base, monitoring everything that happens in every corner of the base.Today's launch is Jiden's 100th, and after graduating from the Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics with a master's degree in spacecraft control five years ago, he moved to this inhospitable part of the Gobi Desert with three of his closest classmates to become a ground control engineer. Now he is involved in ensuring that the flight control system of the huge cargo spacecraft on the main launcher is working properly. The main control system was a 3-mode redundant design, and his task was just to test and monitor one of the modes until the spacecraft reached the moon base.It was a bit of a boring job, but the lucrative pay and advanced working environment still managed to entice him to keep working for 5 years. Stretching his back, Jiden returned to his workstation. Everything looked normal on the two-dimensional monitor in front of him. Blue and green lines indicated that the lines were working, and if they appeared red, then some equipment must have malfunctioned."Power systems?""Power systems normal!""Main A engines normal!""Main B engine normal!""""Fuel supply system?""Fuel supply system normal!""...""Flight control system?""Flight master control normal!"Shawn made a face with Jiden, made a drinking gesture in his hand, and pointed to his watch. jiden mentally comprehended it and nodded with a smile. Since they started preparing for the launch 5 days ago, the two of them, who were in the same class, ate and lived in the control centre, and could only rest for 6 hours a day, completing this launch would allow them to have 2 days off, so tonight must be the night to go out and have a few good beers."Escape system normal!" "..." the responses that came and went indicated that everything was going as planned. In another 30 minutes, the ship would be launching.Even though the status of all systems was visible on the auxiliary displays in the centre's sandbox, the base's Vice-Admiral Seth asked for a verbal report from the engineers in charge of all systems and subsystems, as had been the traditional custom in the 200 years of the base's existence. The military man listened with satisfaction to the engineers reporting out loud, a great feeling, as if he were back 30 years ago. At that time as a fleet detachment commander he had 120 men under his command, dozens of combat ships, doing things with great gusto, and the mountain of replying verbal orders from his men after a command made people swoon."30 minutes to prepare!" "Thirty minute countdown begins!"Jiden knew that at this point he had nothing tiring to do, the only work was to stare at the screen in front of him, observing those blue-green lines and jumping parameters. 99% of the problems can be automatically identified by the computer, only that 1% of the possibilities need manual intervention. And he hadn't encountered such a manual intervention in five years.Jiden didn't need to turn around to feel the ship on the main launcher 10 kilometres behind him, ready to go. Solid fuel was already in the fuel tanks, and the three astronauts, a captain, a navigator and a mechanic, were reclining in the cockpit at the head of the ship. The astronauts' seats were designed to resemble bath tubs in which the human body was curled up to maximise resistance to overload during lift-off. Aft of the cockpit was a small passenger compartment that could hold 10 people, where four armed police officers in space combat suits sat.Jiden's senses travelled down the passenger compartment into the cargo hold. There were nearly a thousand tonnes of much needed material and equipment for the moon base. The mission was to deliver one of the main engines to the Moon to be installed on the Skylab 2 starship. "Sky 2 will be launched from the Moon in a year's time with the aim of reaching Mars, where there are already two human scientific observatories, Aurora Station and Freedom Station. Japan and the U.S.A. own one of them respectively, and the "Skyline 2" will be one of the regular cargo ships of the "Aurora Station", responsible for transporting people and materials between the Mars base and the Moon base. It is planned that in 10 years, Aurora Station will be expanded to become the first real colony on Mars, with 10,000 inhabitants and a mission of scientific research, mining and deep space exploration of the solar system.The fuel tanks hold solid hydrogen and oxygen. Spaceships launched from Earth cannot use nuclear fuel due to EPA insistence. Of course, the Moon and Mars bases are not covered by this order. In fact, the Skylab 2 engines in the cargo bay use nuclear fuel. The Moon's abundance of helium-3 would be the best source of energy for interplanetary travel. According to current production capacity, every 100,000 tonnes of lunar soil can be processed to yield 1kg of helium-3, and 1kg of helium-3 burned in a fusion reactor can generate electricity for a year at a rate of 10,000kW.The first Star Wars broke out 50 years ago to grab these resources. Hundreds, if not thousands, of armed spaceships from Japan, the United States, Russia, Brazil, India, and Europe each entered the war. The 10-year space war ended in victory for the Japanese-American coalition. No one would have thought that two countries with a history of grudges would become allies at the end of the war, joining forces to eliminate the other parties and take firm control of the Moon. The result of the war was that Japan and the United States shared equal jurisdiction over the entire Moon, as well as outer space. Nonetheless, everyone knew that the two were in bed together, and for 40 years all sorts of open and shut battles never ceased.Below the fuel tank was the power tank. Suddenly, a strange feeling slipped through Jiden's mind. Couldn't tell what it was, but the feeling caused him to pull his thoughts back to the fuel bay. Up the main armour engines, there were 20 fuel sub-compartments, each containing hundreds of tonnes of solid hydrogen and oxygen. Focusing his mind, Jiden's thoughts searched the tanks from the bottom up, one by one, before finally stopping on the third pair of fuel tanks.The sensation seemed like a blurred vision in the darkness, indescribable but unsettling."What's wrong?" , Jiden thought to himself, there was something familiar and frightening about the feeling. He frowned and lowered his head, shaking it violently, but the unpleasant feeling lingered in the back of his mind. It seemed like it had been felt before sometime, and it seemed like he was afraid to touch there."JJ, what's wrong? Sick?" Shawn's voice was in his ear."N...nothing." Jiden looked up and forced a smile, his eyes resting on the picture on Shawn's desk. It was a picture of Shawn's newly full moon daughter, red and fleshy and very cute."Child...Dad...Mum..." as if struggling in a whirlpool, Jiden desperately tried to turn his thoughts back to reality, but like a drowning man, no amount of effort could stop the fear of falling into the abyss. Suddenly, that night 25 years ago replayed in his mind like a film."Mum, hug!""Get in the car! You're so big and you still want mum to hug you, aren't you ashamed?" My father's voice seemed to be ringing in my ears. A family of three came out of the restaurant "Yue Shang Jia Ren" in the city centre, the three-year-old child was happily held by his mother, while the father held the car keys in his hand and walked towards the parking space on the side of the road.The car crossed a small street and turned right onto the main road. Gradually, the speed picked up. The headlights shone on the expressway sign, and the fluorescent white text read, "500 metres ahead onto Highway 3".Hit the lights, merge, enter the highway. Inside the car, the holographic display was playing a boring TV show, the child in the back seat was fiddling with the small toys in her hand, the mother was sitting beside the child, watching the TV without thinking, glancing at her husband out of the corner of her eye, with a happy smile on her face.Suddenly, the child looked up at mum, "The car car is broken, the car car is broken!"Mum smiled and took the toy car from the child's hand and looked at it, "No, isn't it fine? Good boy, play by yourself.""The car is broken, the car is broken, the wheels are going to fall off," the child looked at his mother and said in a milky voice."It's okay, we'll buy a new one tomorrow." Mum looked at the toy car in her hand again, all four wheels were intact and there was nothing wrong with it.Suddenly, the car, which was travelling at 160 kilometres per hour, tilted violently to the left, and Mum, who was sitting on the left side, hit the door heavily, and the whole body of the car rushed uncontrollably towards the barrier in the middle of the road. In the night, the left front wheel of the car came off the axle violently and slid into the distance behind her. The car body was completely out of control, hard into the barrier, the huge impact made the car body flipped over in the air, followed by rolling across the road 7, 8 circles, the top down on the reverse carriageway to continue to slide. The metal roof and the road rubbed out pieces of sparks between. Deafening sirens suddenly blared as a large lorry slammed head-on into the runaway sedan with the sharp whine of emergency braking ......"JJ! JJ! wake up! What's wrong with you? ...Your face looks awful! Are you sick?"Shawn shook Jiden's shoulder as hard as he could.Jiden jolted awake, with Shawn's frightened, anxious gaze in front of him. He sensed that someone around him had realised that something was not right here and had turned their attention to him. Suddenly he felt so cold, cold sweat soaked through his underwear and even ran down his sleeve."I've been calling you for a few times but you haven't responded, what's wrong?" Shawn looked worriedly at the pale Jiden, "You were shaking all over the place just now, no matter how much I called you, you couldn't."Looking up he was seeing a red countdown displayed above the holographic sandbox, 10 minutes to launch."No matter what, I have to stop this launch!" Jiden gritted his teeth and suddenly stood up. He walked towards the senior officers seated around the sand table, there was Seth, the base's Deputy Commander, who he knew well, but rarely dealt with directly.Shawn looked at him confused and reached out for a tug, but didn't stop it."Report!" Jiden's voice trembled a little, hesitated, and said again in a small but firm tone, "Report!"Seth looked up and saw an engineer in blue overalls standing in front of him, not very old, he must have been less than 30, his face a little pale. It could be seen that this young engineer was a bit nervous, his hands shook uneasily at the sides of his body, his hair was a bit fluffy, his features were decent, but not handsome."Go ahead." Seth knew that these lads had all been working for 5 or 6 days straight with very little rest for this launch. He liked them from the bottom of his heart, the same way he liked the young fleet fighters he'd been born and died with back in the day. He knew they had all voluntarily chosen to serve their country and had sacrificed much, even their lives, for their choice."Please...please pause your launch! There may be a malfunction in the fuel system." Jiden wasn't sure yet what the consequences of such a risky move on his part would be, but that strange instinct told him that if he didn't speak up, not only the astronauts on board the ship, but all the people and buildings in the vicinity of the main launcher would suffer great damage."Hm? You're the engineer for the fuel supply systems group? Why is the computer display normal?!" Seth glanced at the fuel supply system on the auxiliary display unit, where it was a blue-green colour with throbbing parameters indicating that everything was normal."No...I'm the engineer in charge of the flight control system's 3-mode subsystem...but I have a feeling that there's a major malfunction in the fuel system that has the potential to trigger extremely serious consequences." Jiden was calming down, he knew there was no way to explain this, but if he could stop the launch, he could potentially save many lives. Even though he couldn't be sure exactly what it was that made him feel that there was a problem with Fuel Tank 3 of the Main Armour Engine, his childhood experiences had led to a strong inner sense that if he could stop the tragedy from happening to someone else, it would alleviate the uneasiness, fear, and guilt that he felt in his own heart.Seth looked at Jiden in amazement.By this time the people around him had heard the conversation between the two.A middle-aged official with some blonde hair approached him.He was dressed in white coveralls that indicated a high ranking chief engineer. Behind him, another chief engineer in white overalls followed, that was Jiden's top boss, Bob.Bob also looked at Jiden in surprise, "Jiden, what happened? Is there a problem with the control system?""Are you J . . jiden? what's wrong with the fuel system? How do you know?" The middle-aged fat man said nervously. His name was Steve, and he wasn't really familiar with Jiden, so it took him a moment to think before calling out his name.Seth's face got serious. Nothing like this had ever happened before. A junior engineer was going to stop an important launch simply because it "felt like it was going to go wrong" and the system that was reporting the error wasn't part of the engineer's responsibility, or even part of his own department's responsibility."Your name is Jiden, and you have less than nine minutes until launch. Do you know the consequences of interfering with a normal launch?" Seth was a little sceptical as to whether the lad was a little out of sorts due to lack of sleep and stress, and it seemed highly likely that this was the case."I know. But there's got to be something wrong with fuel tank 3 of the main armour engine, my instincts tell me so!" Jiden had no choice but to go out on a limb at this point, it was something that couldn't be explained. He blurted out the reason stiffly, knowing full well himself that no one would believe him."What! Intuition? Intuition?!" Seth, Bob and Steve's serious and tense faces all showed a look of disbelief. bob then laughed a little awkwardly, and said, "good for you Jiden, let's see how I'm going to deal with you when I'm done, intuition! Hmph! It's not like you're trying to make a mess!"Seth was a bit unhappy, he waved his hand and said to Bob, "Xiao Zhou, it's the engineer of your department, right? Looks like he's been too tired lately. Well, spirit, this, may be a bit bad. Get some rest after the launch is complete." He almost said "mentally challenged", but changed his mind when he reached the end of his sentence."I don't have... that... mental... problem", Jiden knew that time was running out and there was no chance to explain, so he had to take a gamble and say everything he knew, hoping to convince the other side."Reporting to the Supreme Officer, all 19 containers in the ship's cargo bay are at risk of being lost in the accident if the launch is not stopped. 18 of them are black standard containers and 1 is a red small type 3. 12 of the 18 black containers contain disassembled nuclear power engines, 5 toolboxes, and 1 miscellaneous box. There are 10 cases of Moutai and 10 cases of Wuliangye in the sundries box. The red containers have...""Shut up! No more talking!" Seth, despite being battle-hardened in his youth, couldn't help but sweat on his forehead and clench his fists at this moment. The contents of these containers were highly classified information, that is, not many people knew the number of boxes. 10 cases of whisky and 10 cases of wine were secretly arranged by himself to be put in there, these were personal gifts for his old comrade in arms, the current Deputy Commander of the Moon Base. No more than three people knew about this, except himself and the captain. And the red container was related to a top secret project at headquarters, what was in it he himself did not know.Therefore, despite not knowing exactly what the young engineer in front of him was from, as the supreme commander of this launch, he had to make an immediate decision based on the latest situation.After a few moments of contemplation, he blurted out in a firm tone, "Stop the launch procedure immediately!" Seth was worthy of being a general who had been through a hundred battles, and it was immediately clear that things were not as simple as he had begun to think."Stop the launch procedure!" The rigorously trained operator did not hesitate to immediately carry out the general's order while repeating the instruction and pressed the button to terminate the launch. The countdown numbers at that point showed that only 2 minutes and 59 seconds remained.Jiden was sitting in a room 20 square metres square. There was a table and two chairs in the centre of the room. In the north-east corner of the room there is a sink and toilet, and no windows. In the middle of the roof is a 360-degree omnidirectional holographic camera. There are no vents; air exchange is done through nano-filters on the roof. Soft light also leaked down from the roof, but there were no lamps in sight. It was a holding cell.Stretching, Jiden tried to position himself in one of the chairs in the most comfortable position. Regardless, it had been a bit of a tiring week. Even though there were five or six launches of this calibre every year, every single one of them had some kind of mishap, big or small, which the old men on the base called the "Law of Launch", which meant that the worst of the problems couldn't be detected until the ship was on the launch pad. It worked.This room is not bad, he thought to himself, but the convenience of being unobstructed is a bit uncomfortable.When Vice Commander Liu terminated the launch, he was brought here by the guards. A full 2 hours passed and no one came in to ask him any questions. In fact, Jiden knew very well that all of them must have been urgently inspecting the ship on the launch pad at this point. Whether he was right or not, all the fuel tanks, power systems and even control systems would be thoroughly tested again. Such tests usually lasted 10 hours or more for each system. If he was "lucky" enough to find a fault in the fuel tanks, he was sure that someone would come ahead and ask him questions. Jiden smiled bitterly at the thought, thinking that it was hard work to save people's lives. Feeling a bit tired, he laid down on the table and gradually fell asleep.I don't know how long it took, Jiden was gently pushed awake, his false eyes adjusted to the harsh light for a while, feeling that the room was even brighter than when he first came in. An officer sat across the table, his right hand pushing on his shoulder.Glancing at the man's rank of Major, Jiden looked the other man in the eye and waited for him to speak first."Hello, my name is Karl, head of Section 3 of Security."Jiden was slightly surprised to see Karl reach over and shake his hand, "Hello, my name is Jiden, well of course you already knew that.""Nice to meet you. O, I'm also a graduate of the Aerospace Academy, level 20." Karl smiled.Jiden relaxed, it seemed like maybe there was nothing wrong, otherwise this Major Section Chief wouldn't have made the mistake of getting close to him. But he forgot that these professionals had a way of dealing with all kinds of people. For a young technician like him, it was essential to put the other man off guard if he wanted to get useful information out of him."I'm a level 28, it's nice to meet Senpai." Jiden didn't ask questions and waited for Karl to tell him the results of the ship's test.Karl smiled as he looked at Jiden and suddenly said, "The airship test has just finished. No malfunctions were found.""Huh?!" Jiden's mouth opened wide, and it took him half a day to catch his breath, "No problems? No it shouldn't, it should be accurate, well, but no problems would be even better.""Why do you say it should be accurate? Any basis for that?" The smile on Karl's face deepened a little more, though Jiden suddenly felt something impish about such a smile, like the smile of a werewolf grandmother with an agenda."Nothing, just a hunch." Jiden slouched in his chair. If there was nothing wrong with the ship, the most he could be guilty of would be nothing more than delaying the launch without reason. And such a transgression was usually a deduction of three to six months' bonus, not usually dismissal from public service."Intuition? Can you explain that?" Karl smiled.Jiden thought about it for a moment, and thought it would be relatively good to say it. After all, he still cared about his current job, and he didn't want to give his leader the impression that he was mentally challenged. He held out his hand in front of him and made a circle, and said, "I generally have a strong intuition about things around me, that is, I can feel... or guess some situations that others can't find out.""Ou? Then guess what's in my hand?" Karl clenches his fist and places his right hand in front of Jiden, who grins and says, "Nothing, too good to guess." Karl smiled and held out his left hand again, still in a tight fist, "Guess this one again?"Jiden smiled and suddenly frowned again, "Hmm? Weird, what's this? It's a little black box, what's it for? ...It feels so strange, it seems...it seems..." he wasn't sure enough to go on.Karl stared intently into Jiden's eyes, "Seems what?""It seems to be something on the ship,..., yes, could it be that it's making me feel very uneasy in the monitoring centre?!" Jiden's eyes suddenly widened, he felt a little nervous and involuntarily arched from his chair.Karl was still staring intently into Jiden's eyes, and the two of them just looked at each other for a few seconds. Slowly, Karl released the fist of his left hand, and in his palm was a small black box, very small, close to 2cm in length and width, and about 1cm in height. He looked Jiden in the eye and said slowly, "This was found between the inner and outer walls of the main armour engine 3 fuel tank. It is true that the ship did not have any malfunctions, however, it was an automatic explosive device. It will automatically explode when the No. 3 fuel pod is near completion of consumption, thus destroying the entire ship."Calculations flew through Jiden's mind, "Fuel pod #3 depleted? That would be in outer lunar orbit, when the ship would dock with the outer orbiting space station."Karl nodded, "Exactly right, the ship will be unloading a very important crate of supplies at the outer lunar orbiting space station, in a red container in the cargo bay. You know there's a red container there too."Jiden frowned, "What miscreants! But why would they do that? Wouldn't the people who planted the bomb easily destroy the ship on the ground? And if the ship on the launcher exploded, the damage to personnel and supplies wouldn't be any less than destroying a space station in outer space."Karl shook his head, "If we knew the answer, we wouldn't have come here to give you this new mission.""A new mission?" Jiden looked at Karl with suspicion while the other man remained calm and smiling.Karl nodded, "After a joint study by the base's supreme officer, the relevant departments at headquarters, and the base's relevant departments, first of all, we believe that you are completely reliable as a technician on a technical level. After careful study, the base security division and the relevant departments at the headquarters have completely ruled out the possibility of you committing the crime and your motives for committing the crime. In other words, this conspiracy has nothing to do with you."Jiden thought to himself, "It has to do with me, can I tell warn you in advance?""Secondly, this launch you saved the country a huge loss and thwarted the enemy's plot. Even though, um, the bad guy we haven't caught yet, um, you still got a lot of credit."Jiden muttered, "Great service and still keeping me here."Karl reached out and patted Jiden on the shoulder, "Young man, you have to trust the organisation, this is just a temporary arrangement."He continued, "In the end, the highest officer of the base and the relevant departments of the headquarters decided after a study that the launch will resume tomorrow. And you, as an accompanying engineer, will be travelling to the moon base with the ship. This, then, is your new assignment."Jiden's mouth didn't close for a full 10 seconds, and after a long time, he managed to come back to his senses and exclaimed, "Why! I don't agree! On what grounds, I'm not an astronaut. Besides, how can you risk resuming the launch when you haven't caught the bad guys yet?"Karl's smile looked rather gloating at this point, "Young man, don't get excited. Just let me explain. First of all, we've studied your file, you took the special ability test at HQ 304, the Institute of Human Engineering, when you were in the 3rd year of junior high school, and you were at level A3, right?"Jiden nodded, "That's no big deal, it should all be in my file. The best specials would be level A1, and I'm not even close!"Karl smiled, "There's no need to discuss who's better right now. But according to the tests conducted by the 304th Institute, it was not found that you have special foresight of impending danger, nor that you can actually 'see through' objects as far as 10 kilometres away."Jiden shook his head, "I can't foresee imminent danger otherwise..., hehe." He sighed, his mind seeming to touch back on the tragedies of his childhood.He continued, "The distance of the perspective is actually related to how familiar I am with the object. The Pegasus-3 cargo spacecraft on the launcher was one of the spacecraft models I focused on in graduate school, and I know the various compartments and modules of it very well. And it's a huge thing, weighing 10,000 tonnes, and it's huge. Maybe those are the reasons I can see through it from as far as ten kilometres away."Jiden looked up at Karl and realised that he was very interested in the explanation of this idiosyncrasy.Jiden knew in his heart that the average person would not be able to comprehend such a thing and would even be a little afraid of it. In kindergarten, Jiden found that he could very easily find the chocolates and candies that his teacher had placed everywhere. When he was in primary school, he discovered that he could see the contents of the playing cards in his classmates' hands. Of course, he never talked about this with anyone, because as a child he first thought that everyone possessed this ability, and later was afraid that speaking out about it would cause his friends to run away from him.By the time he couldn't hide his unusual abilities he had reached junior high school. Being invincible in almost all poker games, one of Jiden's classmates senses a problem, and this classmate's father is a specialist at 304. So Jiden not-so-willingly went for the test, which focused on perspective. After accurately naming the objects in seven closed boxes, Jiden gives up guessing about the remaining three, as he's already seen great shock on the expert's face. No one wanted to be a monster, Jiden knew his friends could barely accept that he could see the playing cards in other people's hands, but no one wanted to stay with someone who could see through everything, where else could they hide their privacy then?Jiden didn't tell anyone that his so-called "see-through" ability was completely different from the common definition. Usually, a person with the ability to see through needs to look at a certain object, and then through the object's internal reflection of certain invisible light, waves or radiation that ordinary people can not distinguish to judge its internal situation. But Jiden didn't need to, he used his "heavenly eyes" to feel. That is to say, at any time, no matter day or night, no matter whether he can see the other side, when he cares about a certain object around him, he can feel its internal structure very easily.Jiden never wanted to talk to anyone about such an ability. So he found an excuse to answer Karl's question.Karl nodded, ''The highest officer of the base considers this mission to transport the red container to the lunar space station to be very important, so he hopes that you can set off with the ship and use your ability to observe and protect the container's safety. Any abnormalities on the way must be reported to the base immediately."Jiden asked, "Why don't we investigate and launch? Is there a need to be in that much of a hurry?"Karl shook his head, "No way. You should know that there is a strong solar storm coming next week and that the best docking window for the Lunar Guardian-1 space station is only one day left this month, tomorrow, so if you miss it, you'll only have to wait another three weeks. Orders from headquarters are that the launch must take place this month."Jiden knew there might be a bureaucratic problem here; orders were given from above and could not be disobeyed from below. These would be beyond the understanding of a junior engineer like him. But inwardly, he felt vaguely that such a decision would actually pose a great risk to himself.Smiling bitterly, Jiden said, "It's an order, isn't it? Can't I just not carry it out?"Karl smiled and said, "Don't worry, you're not the only one added to this mission, I'm going with you as well."Jiden rolled his eyes and said, "I'm not in danger if you go?" In his mind there was one more thing he didn't say, "Who do you think you are!"Standing under the main launcher, anyone would be impressed and amazed at the sheer size of the building, with the 500-metre-high launch tower covering tens of thousands of square metres, the Pegasus-3 cargo ship at almost the same height shining brightly under the early morning sunlight, and the four main engines acting like the thighs of giants to support the nibble-shaped ship. Although atmospheric space planes are the main transport of people and small goods between the present and outer space, this ancient, powerful cargo craft is still the best choice for transporting large cargoes and large quantities of standardised containers to the lunar base. Unlike in ancient times, such a ship is reusable, meaning that, except for the fuel tanks that are lost with each launch, the rest of the ship is designed for a life span of more than 100 reuses.Thanks to Japan's unparalleled industrial capacity, dozens of large cargo ships like the Pegasus-3, which is designed to carry up to 2,000 tonnes of cargo, have been shuttled to and from more than 20 large launch bases and outer space bases around the world. In addition, the smaller Pegasus-4 and Pegasus-5 have hundreds of them serving the world's largest country. The number of space shuttles is even more staggering than the number of spacecraft. The government opened the door to private enterprise in the manufacture of spaceplanes and interplanetary transport shortly after the start of the first Star Wars 50 years ago, and as a result, there are thousands of small civilian spaceplanes busily travelling between Earth and Moon bases, and even between space stations. The cargo capacity of these small spacecraft typically ranges from a few tonnes to tens of tonnes, with the longest-range models being able to travel full loads between Earth and the Moon without refuelling.

Jiden和Karl身着太空战斗服，站在快速向上运动的电梯中，目的是距离地面400余米的飞船小型客舱的入口。透过钢化玻璃做成的电梯壁向外望去，Jiden可以清楚地看到10公里外的基地监控中心，他知道这时朋友们一定在默默地注视着自己。耳机里不断传来各种指令，而这些熟悉的指令他第一次不是在监控中心，而是通过太空服中的耳机听到。