Chapter 10: The Choice of the Twin-Moon Night

The night on the lunar base was far colder than on Earth. When Lin Shen stepped out of the airlock at the Moonshade Base, the insulation layers at the joints of his spacesuit emitted a faint hum, and the helmet visor automatically adjusted its brightness. Above him, Earth hung like a shattered piece of blue jade, the ripples of the Pacific gleaming pearly white along the edge of the atmosphere. In the shadows of the cratered lunar surface, the base’s cold lights formed a pale golden necklace.

He ascended the maintenance corridor, the magnetic clasps on his boots clicking rhythmically against the metal mesh beneath the lunar soil. Xia Qing often said the rooftop here was "the closest thing to a sobriety tonic in a vacuum." At that moment, her sharp short hair was reflected against the observation window; a dark red Mars flickered just above her right shoulder, while a thin wisp of smoke from the cigarette held between her left fingers trailed a translucent veil in the vacuum. It was an old artifact she’d brought from Earth—an attempt to use nicotine to fight the weightlessness of space.

“Major General.” Lin Shen stopped three paces away from her, the visor of his suit slowly sliding down as the moon’s cold immediately wrapped around the nape of his neck. Xia Qing didn’t turn around; ash from her cigarette drifted onto the safety railing, leaving a faint gray circle on the lunar dust.

“You shouldn’t have found this place.” Her voice mixed with the mist of her breath. “I tampered with the base’s surveillance; even the Ark’s tracking system has been blocked.”

“Emil said you left emotional traces in the quantum network.” Lin Shen removed his silver-rimmed glasses, rubbing the fogged lenses with his fingertip. “Like... signal flares soaked by a torrential downpour.”

Finally, Xia Qing turned around. The collar of her tactical suit was open, revealing an interstellar medal resting on her collarbone—a remnant from the asteroid defense battle, the metal edges still bearing scorch marks from twenty years ago. She stared at the glowing cocoon suspended behind Lin Shen, the pale blue halo fracturing into stardust within her pupils. “Their resonance network... can it really reveal emotions?”

“Yes.” Lin Shen recalled the seventh resonance test, when Emil’s spiritual form touched his temple, and suddenly a memory of planting jacarandas in his childhood blossomed in his mind. “It’s not mind reading—it’s sharing temperature. Like standing by a fire; without speaking, you just know if the other’s hands are cold or warm.”

Xia Qing crushed the last bit of her cigarette between her fingers. Mars flickered, struggling in the vacuum, its faint glow casting shifting shadows across her face. “But they need stellar energy.” She pulled a holographic tablet from her tactical suit’s inner pocket, projecting data from Chapter 7—the energy curve of the fusion reactor in the contact zone suddenly dropped by 12% during the resonance test, like a wound sliced open. “Oleg was right. Their civilization is essentially an energy-consuming entity. The sun is our source of life, but for them…”

“It’s a lifeline.” Lin Shen interjected. “Emil showed me the last images of their homeworld.” He reached out to the railing, the biting cold of the metal seeping through his suit’s lining. “Hundreds, thousands of light cocoons drift amid the purple nebula, each housing a spiritual form. When the Star Hunters’ Dyson membrane enveloped them, they couldn’t even grasp the last flickers of starlight—like us, scrambling for the last breath of clean air amid an ecological crisis.”

Xia Qing’s Adam’s apple moved. Lin Shen knew what she was recalling—the asteroid storm at the end of the 21st century, when she, the youngest interceptor, stood watch for seventy-two hours in near-Earth orbit, watching her fighter’s shield become honeycombed by meteorite fragments, while countless escape pods floated beyond Earth’s atmosphere, each packed with those who couldn’t secure a spot for survival.

“In the dark forest, whoever lights up first dies.” She spoke suddenly, her voice as light as the lunar dust that stirred and fell. “My father said this just before the lunar base exploded. He warned never to trust aliens who say ‘we are friends’. Benevolence in the universe is rarer than helium-3.”

Lin Shen looked up at the glowing cocoon. Suspended three hundred meters above the base, its surface reflected the galaxy like a droplet of crystallized starlight. “Emil’s resonance network isn’t a weapon; it’s... the civilization’s bloodstream.” He said, “Every Dreamweaver’s spiritual form is connected to this web. Joy spreads, pain travels. They fear loneliness, fear being forgotten—just like why we plant jacarandas amid ecological collapse—to prove we lived, and lived with warmth.”

Xia Qing fell silent. The shadow of the moon crept over her shoulder, yet the blue light of Earth climbed to the arch of her brow. Lin Shen noticed the knuckles of her tactical gloves blanch slightly—a habit from her days gripping the control stick in the cockpit whenever faced with a difficult decision: to crush her hesitation before acting.

“Do you know why Oleg is so eager for quantum communication technology?” she asked suddenly. “He spoke to me privately yesterday, saying that if we crack the quantum entanglement material in the light cocoons, humanity could achieve interstellar travel fifty years ahead of schedule.”

“But the First Contact Protocol says—”

“Sharing technology will cause structural collapse, I know.” Xia Qing interrupted him. “But Oleg is more pragmatic: if the Star Hunters turn toward the Solar System in three months, we can’t afford to wait fifty years.” She removed her tactical helmet, its matte black shell still warm from her body heat. “So I need someone who believes ‘coexistence is possible’ to stand for me at tomorrow’s contact conference.”

As Lin Shen took the helmet, his fingertips brushed the worn edge of her gloves—the mark left from a scuffle with Oleg’s lieutenant during the eighth chapter’s Aurora Intercept team. “You... changed your mind?”

“No.” Xia Qing looked back toward Earth; the ocean currents of the Pacific slowly rotated in her eyes. “I just suddenly understand that when my father said ‘don’t trust kindness,’ he didn’t mean we should turn off all the lights. He meant we have to learn to distinguish which lights will burn us and which will illuminate a shared path.”

The cocoon’s glow suddenly brightened. Lin Shen didn’t need to turn to know it was Emil’s response. The ripples of the quantum resonance network spread across the lunar surface like a silent song, mingling with the tides of Earth, the scent of jacarandas, and the unspoken farewells from the asteroid storm two decades ago.

At that moment, Xia Qing’s communicator vibrated. She glanced at the message, and the indicator light on her suit collar began to flash. “The Ark has detected new fluctuations in the Dreamweaver quantum network. Emil says the Star Hunters’ trajectory... may have accelerated.”

Lin Shen clenched the tactical helmet, the metal surface etched with Xia Qing’s initials, flecks of cosmic dust embedded in the strokes. “I’ll tell them,” he said. “Humanity has more than just the instinct to survive.”

Xia Qing smiled—that was the first time Lin Shen had seen her smile so lightly in three years, like a feather drifting in the vacuum. “Remember to ask Emil for me,” she said, turning toward the airlock. The reflective line of her spacesuit traced a silver streak across the lunar dust. “Can their resonance network... hold the heartbeats of two civilizations at once?”

Emil’s response came at three in the morning. Lin Shen lay on the suspended bed in the base dormitory, watching the quantum ripples dance on the ceiling. He suddenly recalled the jacaranda tree from his childhood—the last flower it bore was not purple but pale blue, much like the color of the glowing cocoon now.

Outside the window, Earth still hung overhead, and on the far side of the moon, tomorrow’s contact conference awaited.