“Ready for liftoff?” Hisaki asked, tapping on several buttons as the engine hummed ahead of him.

Realizing Elisabeth had already left, Stanley checked his bags. They had everything he needed inside them, including the basilisk essence, thus Stanley gave an affirmative reply. “All ready.”

Hisaki tapped on a button activating something similar to a radio and spoke to Elisabeth outside the ship, “Departure procedures are complete.”

“Opening skylight now.” Elisabeth’s voice projected into the ship, “Take care, Stanley.”

Hisaki gestured for Stanley to speak.

Caught unaware by the sudden need to speak, Stanley replied awkwardly, “You too.”

Hisaki turned off the wireless communication as the roof above their head began to open up.

“Alright, plotting course to Ersolon Eight.” Hisaki interfaced with the projector and a GPS-like interface appeared on the projector showing exact directions. “Shouldn’t take more than a fifty days to get there.”

“Fifty days?” Stanley asked for confirmation. He was unsure as to the actual time it would take to get there by starship. Fifty days was a longer time period than he’d been expecting.

“Mhmmm, it’s relatively close to where we are now. It’s only…” Hisaki examined the projection closely, “8,000 light-years.”

Stanley sat there dumbstruck. That was a lot further than he’d anticipated.

“Stealth activated… gravity clamps deactivated.” Hisaki tapped various buttons as he went through a mental checklist. “And… Takeoff.”

The starship began to float upward in absolute silence. Even the humming noise from the engine earlier had disappeared.

After leaving the atmosphere, the ship entered disappeared into a sub-dimension.

Flipping a switch beside him, Hisaki stood up and stretched. “Now the process is rather boring.”

“That’s it? We’ll arrive in fifty days?”

“We’ll travel in this sub-dimension until the ship runs low on mana and needs to leave to recharge. The complicated bit begins again when that happens.” Hisaki replied, looking down at the projected, “Giving us, approximately, eight hours of free time.”

“Right…” Stanley slowly nodded, still confused as to how the ship actually worked.

While he’d been expecting this universe to have a high level of technology, due to the technology displayed in the Residential Zone and Elisabeth knowledge, even his estimates had been blown away by this spaceship.

Why did the various areas he’d visited have nothing technologically similar to this?

“I’m going to shut down unnecessary systems to save on power and get some rest. Tap my shoulder or something if you need me.” Hisaki shrugged and leaned over the console tapping another few buttons. With a procedural whirling sound, various subsystems shut down.

Hisaki moved toward the rear of the ship and propped himself in a corner seat.

“Guess I’ll read for a bit.” Stanley muttered to himself, pulling out a book from his bag. He quickly realized a problem, though.

The books weren’t being translated. Pulling out other books, Stanley realized it was the same for all of them.

Trying to bring up the system menu to examine what was wrong, Stanley realized he couldn’t.

Apparently whatever sub-dimension they’d entered was disconnected from the system.

Sighing to himself, Stanley realized the next fifty days were going to be rather boring.

A localized translation system had been manually translating for Stanley. Except Hisaki had shut it off along with the other unnecessary systems.

Finding his own position to rest in, Stanley attempted to join Hisaki in sleeping through this boring part of the journey.

The journey to Ersolon Eight was particularly boring.

Periodically the ship exited the sub-dimension to refuel on mana. That allowed Stanley to read the various books in his possession. However, nothing else particularly interesting had happened during this period.

Time passed, and it wasn’t long before they had arrived outside the Ersolon system.

“Alright, finally here. Another few minutes and we’ll be landing on the eighth planet of the Ersolon system.” Hisaki said bringing up a projection of the tropical planet in question. “Running a scan now…”

“I’m receiving a weak distress signal.” Hisaki stood up in alarm. “What the…”

The ship’s lights momentarily flicker before the ship became bathed in a harsh red light.

“It’s gone. Scanner’s offline.” Hisaki tapped another few buttons, before frantically hitting random buttons. “No, everything offline. All controls are gone.”

“No, not everything. Sub-dimension Engine is online and powering up.” Hisaki stated as he examined the console, before opening up a maintenance panel on the wall beside him. Looking at various lights signifying the status of systems, Hisaki frowned and tapped on the wall beside him. “All regulatory systems providing coolant to the Sub-dimension Engine are still offline.”

Stanley stood up and looked out the window, “What’s going on? What does that mean?”

Hisaki ran to the back of the ship, tore off another maintenance panel and began working, “It means the ship’s going to explode.”

Stanley’s mouth opened and closed like a goldfish before finally asking. “What can I do to help?”

“Open that panel and those next to it and stay the hell out of my way.” Hisaki gestured toward several panel while taking out a toolbox with various specialized tools Stanley didn’t recognize.

Following Hisaki’s instructions, Stanley began opening every panel he could find near the area he gestured.

Meanwhile, an alarm began sounding throughout the cabin.

After he’d removed several maintenance panels, Hisaki rushed over to cut several wires in those panels.

The alarm stopped.

Hisaki sat on the ground in relief, “Phew… that wasn’t good.”

“Why did everything suddenly go crazy?” Stanley asked, walking over toward the console.

“That’s what I wanted to ask you.” Hisaki stood up, walked over toward Stanley and poked him in the chest, “Where the hell are we?”

Stanley looked out the window, “The Residential Zone.”

“No, no, no. Don’t give me that bullshit.” Hisaki repeated pointed out toward the planet below, “That… that is a military facility. Otherwise, it would’ve shown up properly on the latest maps. The few scans I managed to get before the virus shut me down showed at least two thousand humanoid lifesigns.”

Hisaki gestured toward the console, “And this… this is a military grade virus. If I hadn’t completely obliterated the self-destruct mechanism before takeoff, we’d already be dead.”

As Hisaki pointed toward the console, a gigantic spark of electricity arched out and fried another portion of the subsystems.

“No!” Hisaki rushed forward and put out the fire with some type of fire extinguisher. Examining the damage he sighed, “Great, now communication’s is broken... Along with air recycling.”

Hisaki turned back around toward him and poked him in the chest, growling out in anger, “Let me ask you again. Where the hell are we?”

Stanley was flustered at the hostility and backed off, “I don’t know, people just called it the Residential Zone.”

“That’s a military designation, then?” Hisaki mumbled to himself, sighing as he sat down. “Either way, the ship’s inoperable. Without a complete system purge to clear the computer virus, we’re not going anywhere.”

“How do we reset the system?”

“Resetting the system isn’t hard, but that isn’t the problem. The problem is that the virus would just hide in the hard drives to reinfect us.”

“What do we do then?”

“We need to somehow purge the virus from our systems then skedaddle to another planet in the solar system. Trying to land on this one would just result in being blown up with military weaponry.” Hisaki explained, “To land we’d need a access code, so unless you have one of those, we aren’t landing.”

“We absolutely need a military authorization code to land?”

“Yep.”

Stanley looked toward the console and asked, “How would you input one?”

“Hmm? Do you actually have military credentials.” Hisaki reexamined him with an analytical eye.

“No, but I’m extremely lucky.” Stanley cracked his knuckles and sat down on the pilot seat.

Hisaki laughed at his optimism, “Luck won’t give us military codes.”

“Try me.” Stanley glanced toward him with a serious look.

Hisaki furrowed his brows, “You must be joking.”

“Do you have a better idea?”

“Fine.” Hisaki brought up the command console of the ship, “Do whatever you want.”

Stanley had attempted to contact Schrödinger earlier through the System Menu. However, he didn’t get a response from the holographic cat.

Stanley sighed at the holographic cat unhelpfulness and mashed random buttons. After mashing a satisfying number of buttons, Stanley turned toward Hisaki and asked, “How do you submit it?”

Hisaki rolled his eyes in exasperation and gestured toward a button at the bottom.

Hesitating, Stanley tapped another button before submitting the code.

A prompt appeared on the command screen.

<Validating authorization through System>

<Validating…>

<Code validated: Welcome back, Lt. Stanley.>

<Defensive measures deactivating>

<Automatic docking procedures enabled.>

Various systems hummed to life and the starship began to remotely pilot itself toward the planet.

Seeing the note directed toward him, Stanley realized his call to Schrodinger hadn’t actually gone unanswered. Schrödinger just hadn’t appearing directly and instead had directly given him the military credentials.

However the situation quickly became awkward as Hisaki leaned over and read the prompt.

“Lieutenant Stanley?” Hisaki examined the message several times, before examining Stanley with extreme suspicion.

With that message, Hisaki obviously wouldn’t believe that Stanley had guessed the code. Nor would he believe if told that Stanley had just been given military access via a particularly annoying holographic cat. Instead, he felt that Stanley had been purposefully playing him for a fool and had an access code.

Hisaki glared irritably at Stanley, but didn’t confront him. He had no idea as to the actual situation on the surface and learning potentially classified information wasn’t that good an idea.

Instead Hisaki stood his ground reaffirmed his earlier price, “The ship’s still mine as fare for transporting you here.”

Stanley stood up, moved out of the pilot seat and nodded, “The ship’s yours. I wouldn’t know how to drive it anyway.”

Hisaki huffed and sat down as the ship began automated landing procedures.

It wasn’t long before they were past the atmosphere and the city of the Residential Zone appeared in sight.

The ship docked on a towering building in Hell Difficulty residential area. Its arrival was quiet and most noticed by the residents.

The ship’s quiet arrival was noticed by a few select people.

The few that noticed it, ignored it when they saw it land in Hell Difficulty. Nobody wanted to enter that area where criminals gather for simple curiosity.

Once docked, Stanley exited the ship and examined his surroundings. “Looks like the right place.”

“Yeah… Well, it isn’t somewhere I would’ve taken you had I known what it was.” Hisaki complained as he stepped off the ship.

As he stepped off, charged electricity began appearing around him.

“Shit…” Hisaki rushed back into the ship and electricity dissipated, “Yeah, I think I’ll stay on the ship.”

“What was that?” Stanley gestured toward area where the lightning appeared.

“A automated defense. Keeps monsters and those without credentials out.” Hisaki explained, “The ship has shielding against the system scan. Listen, I need you to bring me some parts to repair the Sub-dimensional Engine. I’ll need two rolls of soft wiring, a mana transistor, and approximately two pounds of gold.”

“How am I supposed to get that stuff?” Stanley quizzically asked, he only knew what the gold was. Even then, that didn’t make it easier to find.

“Stop playing dumb. This is a military facility, just get me some spare parts.”

Stanley looked out over the side of the building, “Yeah… I’m not sure anybody here is actually aware of that fact.”

“Listen, I did not travel all this way to be trapped in another backwater solar system.” Hisaki threatened, gesturing toward the console on the ship, “The distress signal we received proves that someone on this planet has the parts we need.”

“Wasn’t that part of the virus.”

“No, they’re separate things.”

“Can you direct me to the distress signal then? And write down the parts you need.”

Hisaki rolled his eyes, “I’d need time and others parts to repair communications enough to track it down.”

“How much time?” Stanley inquired.

“Another month, if you cannot get me the parts I need.” Hisaki stated frown at the thought.

[Stanley stuck around to help the doppelganger fix his spaceship.]

Hearing the Narrator, Stanley sighed and felt like banging his head against a solid metal wall.

“Wonderful…” Stanley sarcastically muttered to himself. “And here I was hoping to merely settled some things and leave. I’ve already wasted enough time.”