Chapter 16

Edward turned his head, he saw Elina's sweet smile, immediately after that her sweet smile turned into a voice and said, 'You've been silent for more than a day to hide from clearing your head, you must have figured out something interesting, tell the Admiral."

Turning around, Edward looked at the gazes cast by all the officers and men on the bridge, he felt supportive and determined, and that tangled up heart wasn't bothering him at the moment, he took a deep breath and made up his mind.

In the Penland City of Dosas Star, the fresh breeze from the seaside gently brushed Brenda's beautiful long hair, she slowly got up from the beach chair, and gently waved at an old man who came from the distance.

'Gee I envy you! You're completely dumped!" General Barr started yelling from a distance.

'Aren't you getting close too?" Brenda said, giving up her beach chair.

'Geez, all the various meetings, it's too much trouble, and hey, do you think Edward will come after the two of us?" General Barr took the coconut Brenda handed him.

Brenda was happy and said, 'No, Edward the kid is family oriented, he's just lazy and needs someone to push him, Elina's temperament goes well with him."

'Yeah, the kid is toothpaste, it won't come out until you squeeze it." Barr put the coconut aside and said, 'When I retire, are the two of us going to...give you a name anyways."

'Hmph." Brenda squeezed a word out of her nose and gave Barr a blank look.

Barr immediately bounced up from the beach chair and said, 'Don't hum, I've thought it all out, we'll just settle down in Penland City and have two more kids!"

'Two more kids? I'm forty-three! Besides you have Elina." Brenda said as she glared at Bal.

Barr immediately grabbed Brenda by the shoulders and leaned in close to her and said, 'I, too, want to have my own children."

Brenda knocked the hand off her shoulder and asked, 'What's going on with Elina?"

Barr followed Brenda as they walked, 'She was picked up, Edward was too young to remember, I've never been married in my life, think about it."

Brenda laughed and pinched Barr's neck and said, 'Old devil! I think you are so ugly how your daughter is so beautiful, you say which sentence you should believe ah?"

On the beach, two sets of footprints close together stretched out into the distance, and in no time were lost to the rising tide.

Edward stood with his arms folded on the observation deck of the starport's dispatch center, he looked at the pitted hull of the Luchelle hanging in the harbor, and was pondering the battle plan in his mind, when a pair of hands behind him encircled his waist, and he turned back to look ambiguously at the visitor.

'Little wildcat, what are you doing running out early without getting some more sleep?" He ambiguously pinned the messy hair beside Elina's face behind her ear.

'Big wild ass, we're going to Domo Star, can't sleep." Elina stood on her tiptoes and kissed Edward.

'Yeah, going to the capital star of the Free Federation, I wonder what kind of a bunch of people they are." Edward said.

Elina walked over and sat down next to him and said, 'Shouldn't be too hard to get along with, look at Winchell and the others, they're so submissive to you."

Edward shook his head and said, 'I don't want to conquer anyone or dominate anyone, I just need to convince someone that they can adopt our plan, and when it works, my purpose will be achieved."

'And what exactly is your purpose?" Elina said lifting one leg up and crossing it over the other.

'I want to ensure peace within our starfield." He said walking towards Elina and continued, 'After all, we're going to have to live our lives here, and I don't want my children to be born in the middle of a war."

He couldn't help but make up his mind as he thought about his family that he had been separated from due to the war.

'If the governor of the Federation accepts your plan, what are the chances of success?" Elina asked.

'There is a thirty percent chance of success." Edward said with three fingers.

'Too low." Elina said shaking her head.

'If the Federation doesn't take Starfort Andre then we'll be back under Imperial domination within five years and that's unacceptable to the Federation."

Edward said as he leaned over and sat down as well as Elina, then said, 'The battleship that will pick us up should be here soon, it's better not to talk about this, I still have some details to think about."

Elina obediently stopped talking and tilted her head against his shoulder.

A day later, the Federation's Pentacolor Worm cruiser docked in port and picked up Edward and more than fifty other officers and soldiers and sailed to Star Domo, the capital of the Free Federation.

During that time they went through seven hyperspace folds quickly arriving near the target star system, after which they fired up their fusion engines and began their regular voyage.

'No matter how many times I go through the hyperspace jump experience, I still find it hard to get used to it." Winchell tried his best to hide his discomfort, but his face still gave away the fact that his stomach was churning at the moment.

'Discomfort?" Edward asked in surprise.

'Your Excellency may be the one who was born for the stars." Winchell said as he steadied himself.

Edward was unsure and cast a puzzled look.

Winchell continued, 'Ah yes Your Excellency, there is a legend on my home planet that we believe that mankind originated on a certain planet in the beginning, and then interstellar migration took place for some unknown reason. It is said that the hyperspace folding device in the beginning was not perfect and had a lot of side effects, resulting in only a special portion of the population being able to withstand the side effects, and we call these people those who were born for the stars and rivers. They sprinkled the seeds of humanity all over the Milky Way before the Star River Empire came into being afterward."

Edward grinned and said, 'That's obviously just a legend."

'I read a similar story in an old book." Elina interjected, 'What was that planet called?"

'We call it Earth in our legends." Winchell said.

'Yes, what a weird name! The way it's called, we in Dosas should call it Sandball." Elina chuckled.

'I've searched for the planet on star charts, but there isn't a planet called Earth in the entire galaxy." Winchell hammered his chest, trying to drive away what was left of the discomfort.

'Most likely because there was a break in our history that left it behind." Elina said thoughtfully.

'There's also the possibility that we may have come from the Andromeda Galaxy or a galaxy farther away."

Edward interjected with interest, enjoying talking to someone about something other than war.

'Just the nearest constellation, Andromeda, is over ten million light-years away! There's no hyperspace folding device that can do more than ten thousand light-hours of folding." Elina dismissed this point of his.

Winchell touched his chin and thought for a while and said, 'This is really possible, do you guys know the ancient ruins?"

'I know I know, near the Sagittarius spiral arm there are a lot of intelligent creations, the small ones are as big as stars and the big ones are like a nebula.

I've always wanted to see them, I really don't know how those intelligent creations maintain so much mass but don't collapse into black holes." Elina looked out the porthole at the river of stars with a longing look on her face.

'Maybe those intelligent creations are the ships we used when we came to the galaxy." Winchell said while nodding as if he had already decided.

Edward shook his head and said, 'No, no, no, the logic just doesn't make sense, think about it, how do you explain that we traveled through millions of light hours and when we got here the technology regressed instead."

Elina scratched her head and said, 'Right oh, but when it comes to Earth, it's probably long since been dumped out of the galaxy and turned into a cold star."

'I've heard you guys talk about cold stars for a long time, you mean orphan planets!" Winchell said.

'Flung out?" Edward muttered thoughtfully to himself, a pang of clarity in his heart as the last piece of the puzzle in his battle plan was found by Elina, and he suddenly came up with a relatively more perfect plan scenario.

Elina poked Winchell, who was about to open his mouth to continue, and met the puzzled look he threw at him by pointing his chin at Edward, looking at Edward, who was lost in his thoughts, he knowingly kept his mouth shut.

From a distance, the planet Domo looked like a cabbage, on top of the bright green and frosty white interlaced, because of the lack of satellites and self-transportation too fast cause the cabbage looks like a shovel was tapped flat like.

'How high are those mountains?" Elina was excited like a child.

'I don't know, all I know is that most of the mountains are outside the atmosphere." Winchell said.

'How is that possible!" Edward let out an exclamation, he couldn't believe that there were such peaks in the world, he casually pulled out his battle map and pressed it a few times to try and adjust it to that part of Domo's Star, and resentfully tucked it back into his pocket when he realized that he didn't have enough permissions.

'Tama Star's gravity is weird, the gravity still manages to work at the top of the mountain making it possible for him to get a firm grip on the snow up there without being thrown off." Elina said as she stared at the massive mountains.