Chapter 1361: Restart

Cassandra and Asalina’s activity on the Celestial Station had unexpectedly reactivated a dormant terminal, allowing Gawain to successfully connect to the corresponding equipment within the station. Immediately, a thought struck him—perhaps many of the station’s functions could be brought back online using this method. Maybe… the damage to the station wasn’t as severe as he had initially imagined.

Of course, given Cassandra and Asalina’s technical skills, fully repairing the station was out of the question. But at the very least, their efforts might help Gawain gain better control over the station’s systems. It was worth a try.

Well, mostly it was worth having Cassandra try—after all, she wasn’t afraid of dying…

In the dimly lit main hall of the station, Cassandra followed Gawain’s instructions to locate another nearby terminal. Unlike the crystalline panels on the first device, this one was equipped with a series of physical buttons and levers, resembling a manual backup controller designed for emergency system restarts. She examined it carefully, then cautiously tapped a red button at the top with the tip of her tail. After a slightly awkward tactile response, a series of lights flickered on between the buttons and levers.

“Oh wow! This one’s lighting up too!” the sea witch exclaimed, her eyes sparkling. “Your Majesty Gawain, this one’s activated as well. What should I do next?”

“Hold on a moment…” Gawain’s voice came through a nearby comm terminal. He had detected new data streaming into the connection between himself and the station, but he needed a little more time to identify the function of this device and where it was linked. It felt like standing in a dark fog, but now a few small, bright, clear patches were appearing—these were the systems Cassandra and Asalina had just reactivated. Each time a new system came online, the fog lifted a little more.

What he was doing now was carefully mapping the limited space revealed by the clearing fog, identifying pathways to other “blocks,” and guiding Cassandra to activate more devices to dispel the darkness further.

“Look closely at the buttons on that device in front of you—show me the symbols on them.”

“Got it,” Cassandra said, studying the device carefully and memorizing every detail. Then she moved to the terminal connected to Gawain’s comms and opened her hands toward the camera. A mist of water vapor appeared at her fingertips, quickly condensing into a clear holographic model. “It looks like this!”

“Press the middle button on the bottom row. If it lights up, then press the second button from the left on the top row—‘left’ from my perspective, don’t mix it up.”

“Okay!” Cassandra’s face lit up with excitement as she eagerly followed Gawain’s instructions. The process seemed to bring her great joy. As she executed the commands precisely, both she and Asalina, standing nearby, heard a faint humming rising from low to high, as if something was gradually powering up.

The hum came from deep beneath the floor and grew louder before fading away. Then a series of clicks echoed from all directions, and suddenly, bright lights flared up throughout the hall!

It was like a signal to begin. The ancient hall, which had moments before been steeped in deathly silence, instantly flooded with light. The soft whirring of machinery filled the air as the illumination spread from the hall into the nearby dark corridors. Wherever the light reached, equipment that had slumbered for over a million years stirred awake. Holographic projections of system self-checks appeared above devices scattered throughout the hall. If one were to look down on this ancient space structure from orbit, they would see a small section of the long dark ring flickering with light, shining brightly against the backdrop of distant stars.

“Oh my goodness!” Cassandra jumped in surprise at the sudden flood of lights, nearly snapping her tail and launching herself away. But then a thrilled smile spread across her face. “Did we fix the space station?!”

“No way,” Gawain’s voice came through the terminal nearby, instantly dousing her excitement. “We only restarted the backup power unit for one section. Thousands of years ago, the station suffered a collision that caused severe system failures. The power lines were shut down by safety protocols and never properly restarted. You just manually rebooted this area. By the way, the entire ring station has hundreds of such sections…”

Cassandra: “…”

“Don’t be discouraged. This is the first time in all these years that someone has come here and manually restarted any equipment from the outside,” Gawain continued, sensing her disappointment. “Wait a moment—I’m adapting to the newly activated systems… Okay, I can fully see this area now.”

As he spoke, several hidden surveillance devices in the walls and ceiling suddenly awoke, silently adjusting their lenses. In Gawain’s mind, the entire hall where Cassandra and Asalina stood, along with parts of the surrounding sections, appeared on his “screen” in real time.

At that moment, his heart was far more excited than his calm voice suggested. After so many years and countless failed attempts, he had finally glimpsed the interior of this space facility. Though it wasn’t his own satellite or the entire Celestial Station, it was a fateful breakthrough. If Rebecca were here, she’d probably be conjuring a fireball the size of a city gate to celebrate…

He took a few seconds to steady himself, then began sorting through the system parameters flowing into his mind and issued the first command after the section’s restart.

Almost simultaneously, a voice echoed in Cassandra and Asalina’s minds: “Hull airtightness check complete. Side light-shielding bulkhead opening.”

They looked up in surprise. Asalina was the first to notice—the massive alloy bulkhead at the far end of the hall silently slid open, revealing the vast starry expanse outside. A thick, high-strength polymer barrier separated the hall from the void, filtering the harsh sunlight streaming in from the edges. The breathtaking scene etched itself deeply into her memory.

The two women instinctively approached the transparent barrier. The vast, dark space made Asalina a little nervous, but it didn’t stop her from stepping forward. Together with Cassandra, she reached the viewing platform and noticed that the barrier protruded outward from the station’s hull, flanked by curved bulges. It was clearly a dedicated observation area, designed to offer visitors a wide panoramic view.

Gawain’s voice came from above them—now that he had more permissions and access lines, he was communicating through the area’s broadcast system. “What do you see with your own eyes?”

“Stars. Countless stars. And some space facilities orbiting nearby,” Cassandra replied immediately. “They’re so close—normally, space stations are spaced far apart. The Pathfinders must have had incredibly advanced spatial anchoring technology…”

As she spoke, Cassandra scanned the space around her, then suddenly stopped, her gaze fixed on the side of the viewing platform. From this angle, she could see a section of the ring station’s main structure.

“Oh no!” The sea witch exclaimed after a brief pause. “Something’s wrong! Your Majesty Gawain, you’re cracked open!”

Gawain was silent for two seconds, seemingly pondering how to respond naturally to her blunt, loaded outburst. Then he said, “I know. Just as I expected, the damaged section is above the Loren Continent. Describe what you see.”

Cassandra swallowed and leaned closer to the edge of the viewing platform, staring at the shattered hull. She saw the thick alloy bulkhead had been violently struck by something moving at high speed with immense energy. Large armor plates had peeled away from the station’s frame, barely hanging on by fragile, dangling structures and a few tenuous pipeline connections. Near the breach, entire sections were missing, their fragments likely long since drifting away, perhaps captured by gravity and burned up in a planet’s dense atmosphere at some point in the past.

The scale of the damage was staggering, but the station’s compartmentalization and emergency damage control systems seemed to have worked. The affected section was completely sealed off, preventing uncontrolled leaks of liquids or gases and not impacting the life support in the section where Asalina and Cassandra stood. The damaged area was shrouded in pure darkness, with only distant starlight and slanting sunlight illuminating the jagged edges, casting grotesque shadows like a hideous, gaping scar.

Cassandra relayed what she saw to Gawain, then couldn’t help but ask, “Is that the ‘poor condition’ you mentioned earlier? That wound… how did it happen?”

“Well… it’s complicated,” Gawain replied, his tone oddly strange. “You can think of it as a severe case of interstellar speeding and a high-velocity crash… deliberate. Don’t worry about the reasons behind it. So… do you think it’s fixable?”

“If we can get Antavian up and running again, maybe we could try,” Cassandra said. “But with damage that bad, you’d need a space engineering crew working outside the station, doing large-scale cutting, welding, and hull reconstruction. They might even have to rebuild severed power lines on the exterior. It’s not just a matter of sending a few people inside to patch holes in the corridors—some areas are clearly impassable.”

Gawain fell silent for a moment after hearing her assessment, though it wasn’t unexpected.

He had asked her to inspect visually just to get a clearer picture of the station’s damage.

Even if that breach couldn’t be repaired, the overall situation was much better than before. With Cassandra’s help restarting part of the station’s backup power, he could finally gain greater control over this long-dormant space giant—more permissions, more controllable systems, more database access. The Celestial Station was like a machine whose external power had been cut off. Gawain was the control system. Though the machine was old and damaged, many parts could still function. It just needed someone to press the power button from outside, and Gawain could reboot and take command of much of it.

And now, Cassandra pressed that power button.

“What else do you need us to do next?” Asarena’s voice suddenly came through, interrupting Gawain’s train of thought. “Should we head down the corridor to the next compartment? I see the lights are already on deep down that hallway; the power must be back.”

“No, don’t go there yet,” Gawain stopped her. “I can’t connect to the life support systems in the other sections right now, so I can’t confirm if those compartments are safe. For now, keep inspecting this compartment and the rooms directly connected to it—I’ve unlocked all the airlocks, so you can enter freely. Make sure to document everything you find.”

“Got it. We’re on it.”

On the surveillance feed, Gawain watched Asarena and Cassandra spring into action. His attention shifted away from the two explorers and focused instead on the upper-level systems of the Sky Station that had just come back online.

Some previously locked logs were now accessible again. Commands that had been unavailable due to offline equipment or system vulnerabilities appeared in his mind. Like a machine scanning a database, he sifted through these “memories,” quickly dismissing irrelevant environmental data and invalid calls—information already duplicated in the satellite logs.

Suddenly, he paused. His “gaze” fixed on a particular system log.

It was a report from the station’s security system, time-stamped over three thousand years ago—

“External attack detected; substantial damage confirmed. Targeting and weapons systems online. Defense drones have been launched.

“Target lost; search systems on standby.

“Target response still detected; weapons array on standby.

“Requesting further instructions: shut down combat module?

“Error: no instructions received. Weapons array remains on standby…”

Gawain expanded the log and, after some unfamiliar operations, found the corresponding command set.

The “button” to shut down the combat module was still there, glowing faintly in his mind, as if waiting for someone to press it.

A cold sweat broke out on Gawain’s forehead—

Thank goodness he hadn’t let Amon roam freely in the real world. Even occasional deployments were kept as low-key as possible, and he certainly hadn’t let him fly around in the sky… It’s been three thousand years, and the Sky Station’s weapons array was still locked onto him!?

What kind of grudge was this!?

If someday in the future human civilization finally broke free of its chains and gained the ability to launch ships into space, and Amon excitedly tagged along with the mortals, the heavens might just get hammered by a round of orbital strikes…

That terrifying thought flashed through Gawain’s mind, making him shiver and raising the hairs on his arms—even though he was only in a consciousness state at the moment. Hastily, he reached out in his mental space to press the button to shut down the combat module—but at the last second, he stopped.

(End of chapter)