Jin sat on the hard metal floor of the cargo hold. He rubbed his numb hands together. The ship's heater blasted dry, stale air into the cabin. It smelled like burning dust and old oil. His body slowly stopped shivering. The extreme cold of the open ramp was gone, but his chest still hurt. His lungs felt scraped raw.
He stood up on shaky legs. He walked up the short ramp to the cockpit.
Nyx sat in the pilot seat. She did not move. Her hands rested lightly on the control yoke. The ship engines screamed a high-pitched whine. The metal floor plates vibrated constantly. The ship was pushing its absolute maximum speed. It was a garbage hauler. It was not built to run from the military.
Jin looked at the main radar screen on the dashboard.
The screen glowed a dull green. In the center was a small white triangle. That was their ship. Behind them, at the very edge of the sensor range, new shapes appeared.
There was not just one red dot this time. There were twelve.
Twelve imperial pursuit ships. They formed a tight wedge formation. They were moving much faster than the single interceptor Nyx destroyed.
"They found us fast," Jin said. His voice was raspy from the cold.
"The First Prince does not waste time," Nyx replied in his mind. Her telepathic voice was calm. "He sent his elite hunting squadrons. Those are Wyvern-class light cruisers. They are heavily armed. They are three times faster than this vessel."
Jin did right the math in his head. "They will catch us before we reach the neutral border."
"Yes," Nyx said.
Jin gripped the back of her chair. He looked out the front viewport. The black void of space stretched out ahead of them. There was no place to hide. Space was empty. You could not duck behind a building or lose a tail in an alleyway. If a faster ship was behind you, you died. That was simple physics.
"Do you have more of those biological missiles?" Jin asked.
"I have four high-tier beast cores left," Nyx answered. "But they will not work. The Wyvern cruisers fly in a linked shield formation. If I fire a missile, twelve ships will pool their Aether to block it. My weapon cannot break a combined shield."
Jin stared at the twelve red dots. They were creeping closer to the center of the radar screen. The distance numbers on the digital readout dropped rapidly. Ten thousand kilometers. Nine thousand. Eight thousand.
He felt entirely useless. He was a Foundation Level 3 cultivator. He could not fight. He could not fly a spaceship. He was just heavy cargo.
"Sit down, My Prince," Nyx ordered. "Strap yourself into the copilot seat. Do not unbuckle the harness."
Jin did not argue. He walked around her chair and dropped into the copilot seat. He pulled the heavy four-point harness over his chest. He locked the heavy metal buckle. He pulled the straps tight against his collarbones.
"What are you going to do?" Jin asked.
Nyx did not answer him. She reached up and flipped several switches on the ceiling console. The internal cabin lights shut off. The cockpit went completely dark. The only light came from the glowing green instrument panels and the distant stars outside the window.
She pushed the control yoke forward.
The ship banked hard to the left. Jin's stomach dropped. The artificial gravity compensators whined loudly, struggling to keep up with the sudden maneuver. The ship dove downward, away from the clear escape lane toward the Academy border.
Jin looked out the window. He saw where they were heading.
Chimeria was an old planet. It had a massive ring of orbital debris. It was not made of natural ice or rock. It was a ring of pure industrial garbage. Millions of tons of destroyed ships, dead satellites, and discarded biological waste floated in a thick belt around the planet's equator.
Nyx was flying the ship straight into the junk ring.
"They have better sensors than we do," Jin pointed out. "They will just track us through the debris."
"I am not trying to hide," Nyx said.
The ship hit the edge of the junk ring. It was chaotic. Massive chunks of twisted metal floated in every direction. Some pieces were the size of small houses. Others were the size of entire city blocks. The space between the debris was filled with frozen coolant and static electricity.
Nyx did not slow down. She kept the throttle pushed all the way forward.
She flew the bulky cargo ship like it was a tiny fighter jet. She threaded the needle between two massive pieces of an old transport barge. The gap was barely wide enough for their ship. The metal hull scraped against the debris. A horrible screeching sound echoed through the cockpit. Sparks flew past the viewport.
Jin gripped his armrests. He held his breath. A normal pilot could not make these calculations. Human reflexes were too slow.
But Nyx was not using human reflexes. She was a Level 4 Divinity Realm cultivator. Her brain processed information a thousand times faster than a mortal. She saw the trajectory of every piece of floating junk. She calculated the distance, the speed, and the rotation of the debris in a fraction of a second.
The radar screen beeped aggressively. The twelve imperial ships entered the junk ring behind them.
They did not slow down either. They were elite pilots. But they did not have a Divinity Realm expert flying their ships. They had to rely on their targeting computers and Core Formation reflexes.
A bright green flash lit up the rearview monitor.
One of the Wyvern cruisers misjudged a tight turn. It clipped a massive, frozen chunk of biological waste. The impact spun the cruiser out of control. It slammed sideways into a dead satellite. The cruiser's blue shield flared bright, then shattered. The hull buckled. The ship exploded in a silent ball of orange fire.
Eleven red dots left on the radar.
"They are firing," Nyx said calmly.
The remaining imperial ships opened fire. Bright bolts of blue plasma shot through the dark space. They carved through the floating debris. The plasma melted solid iron into slag instantly.
A plasma bolt grazed the side of their cargo ship.
The entire vessel shuddered violently. Jin was thrown hard against his harness straps. The metal hull groaned. The temperature in the cockpit spiked by twenty degrees in a single second. Red warning lights flashed across Jin's console.
"Hull integrity compromised," Jin read the screen. "We lost the outer armor plating on the left side."
Nyx did not speak. She let go of the control yoke with her left hand.
She placed her open palm flat against the green glass of the main dashboard.
Jin watched closely. Black Aether began to leak from her fingertips. It looked like thick ink. The black energy seeped into the console. It flowed through the digital circuits and into the wiring of the ship.
Nyx was bypassing the ship's mechanical systems. She was manually extending her own Divinity Realm bio-field into the hull of the cargo ship. She was using her own cultivation base to hold the cheap metal vessel together.
The black Aether spread across the ship's outer hull like a web of dark veins.
Another blue plasma bolt hit them directly in the back engine housing.
The ship shook, but the armor did not break. The black Aether web absorbed the kinetic shock and the thermal heat. Nyx's shoulders tightened slightly. Taking a plasma bolt from a military cruiser directly into her bio-field was not easy. It drained her energy reserves fast.
"Two minutes to the border," Nyx said. Her telepathic voice sounded slightly strained for the first time.
She pulled the yoke hard to the right. The ship spun on its axis. She dove under a massive, floating graveyard of dead imperial frigates.
The pursuing cruisers followed. They fired non-stop. The space around the cargo ship was a chaotic light show of blue plasma and exploding metal debris.
Jin watched the radar. The eleven dots were spreading out. They were trying to surround the cargo ship. They wanted to trap Nyx in a crossfire.
"They are flanking us," Jin warned her.
"I see them," Nyx said.
She pushed the ship out of the dense junk ring. They broke into clear space again. The neutral border of the Genesis Zenith Academy was right in front of them. It was not a physical wall. It was just a line of navigational buoys broadcasting a constant warning signal on all frequencies.
The imperial ships broke out of the junk ring right behind them. They had a clear shot now. There was no debris to block their plasma cannons.
"They are locking on," Jin said. The warning buzzer in the cockpit screamed a constant, flat tone. "All eleven ships have a missile lock."
"Hold your breath, My Prince," Nyx said.
She took both hands off the control yoke. She slammed both palms flat onto the dashboard.
A massive wave of black Aether erupted from her body. The air in the small cockpit grew heavy. The pressure popped Jin's ears. He could not breathe. The black energy flooded into the ship's ancient engine core.
Nyx did not use the ship's thrusters. She used her Level 4 Divinity Realm power to physically push the entire mass of the ship forward.
The cargo hauler lurched. The metal bulkheads screamed. Screws popped out of the wall panels. The structural integrity of the ship was failing. It was tearing itself apart from the sheer force of Nyx's Aether.
But it moved.
The ship shot forward at an impossible speed. It crossed the gap in a fraction of a second. It blew past the line of warning buoys.
A moment later, the space behind them lit up. Eleven Wyvern cruisers fired their heavy plasma torpedoes at the exact same time. A massive wave of blue destruction washed over the space where the cargo ship had just been.
The torpedoes hit the empty void and detonated. The shockwave rattled the cargo ship, but the hull held together.
Jin looked at the radar screen.
The eleven red dots stopped moving. They hovered exactly on the other side of the invisible border line. They did not cross it. They just floated there, watching the broken, smoking cargo ship drift away into neutral territory.
First Prince Kaelen's orders were absolute, but the fear of Dean Valerius was stronger. They would not risk starting a war with a half-step True Immortal.
Nyx pulled her hands off the dashboard. The black Aether web faded from the ship's hull. She leaned back in her pilot seat.
"We have crossed the border," Nyx said quietly. "We are safe."
Jin let out a long, shaky breath. He unbuckled his heavy harness. He looked out the front window. In the far distance, floating in the black void, he saw the massive silhouette of the Genesis Zenith Academy. It was a massive, bio-engineered space station shaped like a giant lotus flower.
They made it. He survived the first night. The real work was about to begin.