Fantasy Galaxy: Why Are There Goblins and Orcs in Space?

Chapter 8 : An Unexpected Appearance

That day, Varubo - the unit commander of the scouting unit - came rushing back in a panic. Seeing this, Bōburo, captain of the second-class scouting vessel Gyogaru, summoned Varubo and ordered him to report.

「I ordered you on a mission to exterminate those Space Jellyfish. How gome you game bag alone.」

「Captain, the entire unit iz dead. I fought for all I waz worth, but alone there waz nothing I could do, zo I came back.」

「Tch, I knew it - lower-glass subordinate soldiers ain't worth a damn. Fine, I'll send the Mobile Space Gorps instead.」

Captain Bōburo used the Mobile Space Corps to exterminate the Space Jellyfish. However, this was only a temporary measure; unless the space port was fully repaired, there was no way to stop the Space Jellyfish from infiltrating.

Around that time, the war against the Orcs intensified, and the decision was made to put the space port exploration on the back burner. The scouting vessel Gyogaru pulled away from the space port and headed for the front lines.

◆◆◇◇◆◆◇◇◆◆

With air, food, and water no longer a concern, we resumed our exploration of the space port.

「Will this really set us free, I wonder?」

Sario shook his head.

「We're shtill far from free. Ash long ash the dishciplinary terminalsh are in the backsh of our necksh, we remain lower-classh shitizensh.」

「Can't they be removed?」

「Try to remove them careleshly, and they explode, or sho I hear.」

A chill ran down my spine.

「That's……we have to find some way to get them out.」

According to Sario, they could be removed in civilized nations with advanced medical technology.

It seemed we would need to escape the Gorgona Star System and make it to a civilized nation. But the small spacecraft couldn't travel to other star systems. What were we supposed to do?

I put the question to Sario.

「The shmall shtarship alone won't cut it. I think we have no choicshe but to find a way.」

We conducted a thorough investigation of the space port's interior and discovered another repair workshop. Inside lay a half-dismantled space cruiser.

「We may be in luck.」

Sario said this out of nowhere. I had no idea what he meant, but I figured it had something to do with the space cruiser. The ship appeared to have once been an elegant vessel fifty meters in length.

We boarded the half-dismantled ship and searched for anything usable. There, aboard the space cruiser, we discovered a Luon Drive. A Luon Drive was a propulsion system used for traveling through Transition-Space. Transition-Space was a high-dimensional realm that enabled faster-than-light travel.

However, the Luon Drive alone was not enough for faster-than-light travel. A device for transferring - or performing Jump - into Transition-Space was also required. This device was called the Trans-Space-Time Jump Field Generator. Unfortunately, the space cruiser didn't have one of those either.

「Let'sh bring everything we found back to the shmall shtarship.」

We transported the Luon Drive to the small spacecraft and had the maintenance robots service it until it was operational. The serviced Luon Drive was installed in the engine room, and we modified the ship so it could be controlled from the cockpit. With just Sario and me it would have been impossible, but with so many maintenance robots at our disposal, the modifications were finished in no time.

Around that time, we noticed that no Goblins remained in the vicinity of the space port. Nearly all Goblin vessels had headed for the Fourth Planet, which had become the battlefield against the Orcs.

We searched high and low for a Trans-Space-Time Jump Field Generator, but came up empty, and only one uninvestigated location remained. It was a room sealed under heavy lock, and the only way in was to destroy the door.

「Why is this room the only one locked down so heavily?」

「Shomething important enough to warrant it musht be shtored inshide.」

「Something important……what could it be?」

「A new type of weapon, maybe. Or treashure.」

When we discussed whether there was any way to open it, the conclusion was the same - we had no choice but to blow it open. We had explosives from the Goblins, so we'd use those.

We planted the explosives on the special-alloy door and retreated to a safe distance. Then I pressed the detonation switch. An explosion rocked the entire space port, and shattered debris went flying through the zero-gravity space. Once the chaos subsided, we approached the door.

The mounting points securing the door had been destroyed, and the special-alloy door had toppled into the corridor. The sections anchoring the door had given way to the blast before the door itself.

「All right, let's go in.」

「Yeah, let'sh shee what'sh inshide.」

We entered through the destroyed entrance and found a passageway beyond. We passed through the corridor, fragments drifting around us, and emerged into a slightly larger room. What sat inside that room was an egg-shaped capsule roughly three meters long.

Beside the capsule, which gleamed a blue-tinged silver, sat a fusion reactor that appeared to be feeding energy into it. I wondered why this reactor alone was still running, and then I noticed the large fuel tank behind it. Fuel had apparently been continuously supplied from that tank. Maintenance robots were probably still operational as well.

The fusion reactor developed by the Anubis Race should have been feeding an enormous amount of energy into that capsule. What was the capsule using all that energy for. The question nagged at me.

At that moment, a voice echoed inside my head.

【Subordinate soldiers of the Goblin Race. I need you to hear my plea.】

I'm not a Goblin, I thought, scanning the room for the source of the voice. There was no one.

「Don't tell me……it's coming from inside the capsule?」

【Obey my voice.】

The moment those words reached me, I lost all power to resist. I drifted unsteadily toward the capsule and began performing a complex sequence of operations on the control panel built into its surface.

「Zen, what are you doing?」

Sario's voice snapped me back to my senses.

「Huh, what was I……?」

Cracks spider-webbed across the capsule's surface. The floor heaved and shuddered with a deep boom. Then a large fissure appeared, growing wider by the second.

「Wh-what's happening?!」

A person emerged from the capsule. A naked woman. She possessed a beauty so otherworldly it bordered on divine, and upon closer inspection, only her long, slender ears set her apart from an Earthling. She reminded me of an elf from a fantasy story.

I could do nothing but reel in confusion at the impossibility before my eyes. The room was a vacuum - no air whatsoever. A naked person exposed to vacuum should die almost instantly, yet she stood there without the slightest concern on her face.

She was clearly no ordinary human. She radiated a presence no mortal could possess. Sario trembled in short, rapid shivers.

「Are you of the Tenjin Rashe?」

【I am. My name is Zorofiēnu of the Rikageru Tenjin Race.】