Cixin Liu - The Dark Forest

“ Natural Selection is about to proceed to Ahead Four. All crew must enter deep-sea state immediately,” Zhang Beihai said, every word in his solemn, calm voice lingering in the air like an ancient anchor standing in the chill wind.

“This is impossible!” Akira Inoue said.

“Are you Imprinted?” Dongfang Yanxu asked, quickly calming herself.

“You know that’s not possible.”

“ETO?”

“No.”

“Then who are you?”

“A soldier carrying out his duty to fight for humanity’s survival.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“I’ll explain after acceleration is complete. I repeat: All crew must enter deep-sea state immediately.”

“This is impossible!” Akira Inoue repeated.

Zhang Beihai turned around and, without so much as looking at the two vice-captains, stared straight at Dongfang Yanxu. His eyes instantly reminded her of the emblem of the Chinese Space Force, bearing swords and stars alike.

“Dongfang, I said that I would be sorry if I had to kill you. There’s not much time.”

Then the deep-sea acceleration fluid appeared within Zhang Beihai’s spherical compartment, forming into balls in the weightless environment. Each liquid globe, containing his distorted reflection along with the interface and the star map, began to combine into larger ones. The two vice-captains looked at Dongfang Yanxu.

“Do as he says. The whole ship will enter deep-sea state,” the captain said.

The two vice-captains stared at her. They knew what the consequences were for proceeding to Ahead Four outside of the deep-sea protective state: The body would be plastered to the bulkhead by a force 120 times that of Earth gravity. First blood would burst out under the immense weight, spreading into a thin layer of impossibly huge, radially patterned blood stains, and then the organs would be squeezed out, forming another thin layer that would be pressed together with the body into an ugly Dali painting….

As they left for their cabins, they issued orders to the entire ship to enter a deep-sea state.

“You’re a well-qualified captain.” Zhang Beihai nodded at Dongfang Yanxu. “This shows maturity.”

“Where are we going?”

“Wherever we’re going, it’s a more responsible choice than staying here.”

And then he was submerged in the deep-sea acceleration fluid, and Dongfang Yanxu could only make out a murky body through the liquid now filling the spherical compartment.

Floating in the translucent liquid, Zhang Beihai recalled his diving experience in the navy two centuries before. He had never imagined that the ocean would be so dark a few dozen meters down, but that undersea world gave him the same feeling he later found in space. The ocean was space in miniature on Earth. He tried breathing, but his reflexes made him violently cough up liquid and residual gas, and his body shifted with the recoil. Still, there wasn’t the suffocation that he had anticipated, and as cool liquid filled his lungs, the oxygen it contained was supplied to his blood. He could breathe freely, like a fish.

On the interface suspended in the liquid, he saw that the deep-sea acceleration fluid was filling each occupied compartment in the spaceship in turn. The process continued for more than ten minutes. His consciousness began to blur as the breathing liquid was injected with a hypnotic component that put everyone aboard ship into a state of sleep so as to avoid damage to the brain from the high pressure and relative hypoxia generated by acceleration at Ahead Four.

Zhang Beihai felt his father’s spirit alight on the spaceship from the beyond, becoming one with it. He pressed the button on the interface, issuing in his mind the command that he had been working toward his entire life:

“ Natural Selection, Ahead Four!”

A small sun appeared in Jovian orbit, its bright light washing out the phosphorescence of the planet’s atmosphere. Dragging the sun behind it, the stellar-class warship Natural Selection eased out of the Asian Fleet base and accelerated rapidly, casting shadows of the other warships—each dark spot big enough to contain the Earth—onto the Jovian surface. Ten minutes later, a larger shadow was flung onto Jupiter like a curtain drawn across the giant planet. Natural Selection was passing Io.

It was at this point that the Asian Fleet High Command confirmed the incredible fact that Natural Selection had defected.

The European and North American Fleets issued protests and warnings to the Asian Fleet under the initial impression that it was an unauthorized move to intercept the Trisolaran probe, but they soon realized from Natural Selection ’s heading that this was not the case. It was headed in the opposite direction from the Trisolaran invasion.

The various systems hailing Natural Selection gradually let up after receiving no response. The high commands began to deploy pursuit and intercept ships, although they soon realized that little could be done about the defector warship. Bases on four of Jupiter’s moons possessed sufficient firepower to destroy Natural Selection, but they would not take that path, because it was quite likely that only a small minority of those on board, or even a single individual, had actually defected, and the two thousand-odd soldiers in deep-sea state were merely hostages. Commanders at the gamma-ray laser base on Europa could only watch as the small sun flew across the sky and into outer space, sprinkling Europa’s vast ice sheets with light like burning phosphorus.

Natural Selection crossed the orbits of sixteen Jovian moons, and achieved escape velocity by the time it reached Callisto. Seen from the Asian Fleet base, the small sun gradually shrank, turning into a bright star that remained faintly visible for a week, as a reminder from the stars of the lasting pain of the Asian Fleet.

Since the pursuing force had to enter deep-sea state, it took forty-five minutes after Natural Selection left for those ships to launch, lighting up Jupiter with another six suns.

At Asian Fleet Command, which had stopped rotating, the commander silently faced the giant dark side of Jupiter as lightning flashed in the atmosphere ten thousand kilometers below him. Powerful radiation from the fusion engines of Natural Selection and the pursuing force had caused atmospheric ionization and lightning. The fleeting lightning strikes illuminated the surrounding atmosphere, visible at this distance as halos in constantly changing locations, turning the surface of Jupiter into a pond spattered with fluorescent rain.

Natural Selection accelerated in silence to one-hundredth the speed of light, the point of no return for its fusion fuel consumption. Now unable to return to the Solar System under its own power, it had become a lonely boat bound to forever wander in outer space.

The commander of the Asian Fleet gazed at the stars trying unsuccessfully to find one in particular, for all there was in that direction was the faint light of the pursuers’ fusion engines. A report soon came in: Natural Selection had stopped accelerating. A while later, Natural Selection restored communication with the fleet. Then the following communication took place, with delays of more than ten seconds between transmissions due to the fact that the ship was now over five million kilometers away:

NATURAL SELECTION : Natural Selection calling Asian Fleet! Natural Selection calling Asian Fleet!

ASIAN FLEET: Natural Selection, Asian Fleet reads you. Report your status.

NATURAL SELECTION: This is acting captain Zhang Beihai. I’ll speak directly to the fleet commander.