A brilliant star appeared in the corner of the view, and the sun was weakened and filtered to prevent hurting the eyes of the people on the bridge. Hao Ren let the Mobile Data Terminal adjusted the lens of the external monitor, allowing them to see the condition around the star.
The 'Aerym Planet' was long gone. The planet was gradually dismantled into fragments thousands of years ago. Now, it was a stretch of space floating islands orbiting in the same planetary orbit, like a string of fragmentary and roughly sized spikes of stone floating in line in the space. In order to extract the last resources from the bottom of the planet, and to replenish the planet's depleted energy cycle, the elves had resolutely decomposed their entire planet into a fragmented state which allowed them to maximize the amount of solar energy and accommodate more people. They could only get the valuable living space and something more valuable, the experimental field, after the strata in the deep mantle had been dismantled and reshaped into such floating pieces.
Those space floating islands had obvious artificial traces. Their main body was the rock of the planet itself, but there was a huge man-made ring hoop around the floating islands. The artificial structures that were already somewhat dim and which material was between the rock and the metal not only maintained the form of floating islands, but also produced an energy shield to protect the land below, and the energy shield itself could be used to filter the sun. One side of the floating island was flat and the other side was a huge, ugly rock foundation. The old and huge mechanical structures could be seen between the rugged mountains that were hanging upside down. They were the power plants, gravity generators, energy stations, and material recycling plants of the floating islands. Those mechanical structures were probably over thousands of years old and were quite damaged, but it was clear that their makers had no more energy and resources to repair them.
"Those are our homes." Hilda now calmed down, she stood up and pointing to the holographic projection and explained, "Some of the floating islands away from the main residential area are the test fields, where we used to test the space-time core and ultra-high power magic accelerator. If we didn't dismantle the planet like this, we couldn't even find a suitable test field. The magic accelerator needed to be built on a solid and huge foundation, and the conventional space station was unable to carry it, and it may even tear half the planet in the event of an explosion, and therefore, it could not be placed on the mother planet. There used to be a generation of scholars built a huge space platform to try to carry out this kind of dangerous experiment, but a fusion furnace exploded, causing the platform to crash. It almost destroyed the entire northern hemisphere ecology. The experimental projects were suspended until the planetary remodeling was completed. But that's a thing of the past, now the experiments of space-time core and the magic accelerator have been stopped. We really have no more resources."
"The floating islands with bright energy shields are eco-islands, with an ecological dome under the shields. We try to preserve the planet's ecosystems as much as possible and transplant them into a huge artificial recycling system. These ecological domes provide us with valuable and complex organics, and... is also the only luxury enjoyed by my people. Every elf of Aerym can rest in the dome for 15 days a year, but no more. Those domes have limited carrying capacity, and as some critical systems age, they are actually going to stop soon. If they shut down, I'm afraid we'll have to rely entirely on plant synthetics to survive, and this will kill a lot of people. The elf of Aerym is a slow-evolving race, and healthy individuals have a lifespan of 1000 years. The deterioration of the environment is much faster than we can adapt. Whenever an old facility is shut down, there will be a large number of old elves... even the prime elves died."
"The floating islands that have bright beams connected to each other are residential areas, and most elves live on those islands. They are specially designed, have the lowest energy consumption, the most stable circulation system, and the more reasonable construction planning, in other words... can delay for a longer time. Most of the synthetic plants are on those floating islands, and even if other floating islands, such as testing sites, are accidentally damaged, the habitations can continue to survive as much as possible. "
The spacecraft gradually approached the space islands in slow cruising mode. Hao Ren found that there were also a group of special islands among the floating islands: they lingered on the edge of the island chain, were dim and dark, and some of the island borders''hoops' had even been damaged and gone. The remnants of man-made buildings were vaguely visible on those floating islands, but the energy shields above the land were apparently extinguished. The floating islands without any light were lifeless, just like dried up space rocks.
"What is that?"
"The Land of Death," Hilda sighed, "we have created these seemingly magnificent space entities, but that doesn't mean that we have great skill. These floating islands were built in a desperate way, and the technology was not mature enough, even the theory was not perfect enough. The architecture of those islands is different because the original designers did not know what kind of island could hold on longer. Also, many floating islands were flawed at the beginning of the construction which couldn't be repaired at the later stage. So, those floating islands kept destroying, extinguishing, and then became that way."
And now even Lily was quiet. She was afraid of the eerie sight before her eyes. She tucked her tail between her legs but pricked up her ears and asked, "What about the people up there?"
"Most of the time they could be rescued and being transferred to other islands," Hilda nodded and explained, "This would increase the ecological pressure on other islands, so each time after such a rescue transfer will be followed by a period of resource restriction legislation, mainly to limit the newborn and reduce the supply of per capita, and a part of the elderly will take the initiative to enter 'The World of Prayers' which means accepting euthanasia to make room for other adults. We have no choice. We need to let the entire race to survive as much as possible."
"This place..." Hao Ren opened his mouth and was stunned by the scene. "…is more serious than I imagined," he continued.
As a human, an inexperienced agent who had not yet experienced too many events, Hao Ren could not imagine how many unbelievable things are happening in the vast void. The disasters and dooms that he learned from all kinds of stories could not be compared to the chain of space islands before his eyes. Before he came here, he had imagined how to help Hilda and her people, such as borrowing the World Gate system of the empire and his connections at the Kuiper Station to see if he could deliver some supplies here, or buy some technology or spacecraft that did not exceed the provisions of the 'Non-interference of Civilization Act' for the elves of Aerym from the merchants of the Fairy Void Consortium. As an agent, he had a certain amount of 'Empire ration points' every month, but he had not used them yet, he just heard that these rationing points could be exchanged for exceptionally abundant supplies in various civilizations of the Macro World, and that was why so he got the idea above.
But now it seemed that he had to revise all his plans.
But these elves of Aerym needed more than just a little bit of goods and material or a little technology.
"Your creativity and resilience are indeed commendable," Mobile Data Terminal could not help but say something, "it's just that you didn't find the secret of FTL--sometimes a little mistake in the tech would destroy a civilization, especially for a race with insufficient innate conditions like you, so long as there's a technology failed to develop in time, there is no second chance. I can see that you've worked very hard, just... in the end, it didn't work."
Hilda sighed, "Yes, and the last teleportation experiment was also failed."
When the Petrachelys Patrol Frigate was close to the island chain, it obviously got the attention of the elves. Hao Ren noticed that the communicator suddenly reported a large number of unknown contact signals. Some bright light-spots quickly moved from the back of several inhabited floating islands and quickly approached the spacecraft, and after the lens had pulled over, Hao Ren saw those triangular aircraft with think, blunt edges and gleaming silvery metallic sheen. Bright runes are flashing on each of the aircraft's shells, apparently not quite the same as the spacecraft in the general impression. Those must be the spacecraft of Aerym. It was a pity they could not cross the long distance of tens of millions of light-years.
These silvery triangular aircraft quickly came to the vicinity of the Petrachelys Patrol Frigate. Hao Ren slowed down the spacecraft to almost static, so the 'little spacecraft' that were dozens of meters long then stopped and did not make a hasty detour or other rash moves. Their pilots must be in a state of great shock and tension. Everybody on the bridge could even feel the emotion coming through the icy space and several layers of armor of the starship.