Chapter 83 — The Ship That Never Looks Back

Dust On The Lens

The door leading into the Telemetry Station access bay was partially sealed by sixty years of accumulated rust, and it took nearly half an hour for Khe Lam to pry it open wide enough for the three of them to squeeze through, inch by inch, while Chieu Bach Tuyen stood watchful behind, his ears alert for any sounds that might indicate someone was approaching this remote area.

"Be careful of the left tie rod." He spoke softly, his voice trembling slightly with both tension and excitement that he hadn't allowed himself to feel in six decades. "It's gotten a lot weaker since the last time I was here."

Inside, the old control bay appeared under their headlamps like a tomb of forgotten technology—the control panels covered in thick dust, the display screen partially cracked, tangled cables hanging from the ceiling like the dead tendrils of a giant creature. The smell of oxidized metal and long-standing stagnant air filled his nose, causing Khe Lam to hold his breath for a moment before continuing.

"It's much bigger than I thought." Bach Van said, his eyes following the structure extending forward, where a narrow corridor led to the main control center, further towards the mechanical arm with a giant monitoring dish extending beyond the ship's hull.

"It used to take a team of twenty people to fully operate." Chieu Bach Tuyen said, following them with the caution of someone who knows every inch of danger in this space. "Now it's just us, and luckily, we don't need to operate the entire system — just rebooting the main sensor and local storage is enough to collect and read a minimal amount of data."

They arrived at the control center, where Uong Khac Tram had arrived earlier as planned, bending over to examine an old circuit board under a small light, her hands moving expertly across the connectors even though she had never seen this type of device before.

"I've traced the main circuit diagram, based on the drawing you gave me." She spoke, without looking up, her voice strained with concentration. "But the main power source has been completely disconnected from the ship's energy grid for a long time. We need an independent power supply, strong enough to start the system without causing a voltage drop that can be detected by the power monitoring center."

“I have prepared that.” Bach Van said, lowering the heavy cloth bag he was carrying to the floor, opening it to reveal a portable storage battery pack he had borrowed, not entirely legally, from the Pilot Department's practical equipment warehouse, under the pretext of "testing a graduation project" without anyone bothering to check carefully.

Chieu Bach Tuyen watched Bach Van install the battery pack, nodding in approval when he saw how he connected the wires correctly even though he had never received in-depth training on this old system. "You're learning faster than I thought, navigator."

"I had good motivation to learn quickly." Bach Van replied, a nervous smile flashing across his face.

While the two of them focused on the electrical part, Khe Lam moved to the main control station, her hands running over the dusty buttons, trying to imagine the scene where this place was once bustling with twenty technicians working, once one of the most important centers of the ship, before being abandoned because it was too visible, too clear, too uncontrollable.

"Ready?" Uong Khac Tram asked, her hand on the main switch, her eyes looking around the group, waiting for a final nod of agreement before taking the step of no return.

"Ready." Khe Lam said, even though her heart was beating so fast that it almost hurt in her chest.

Uong Khac Tram flipped the switch. A deep humming sound rang out from deep within the system, slowly increasing in intensity, like a giant creature waking up from a long, unwanted sleep. Several red warning lights flashed on the dashboard, then gradually turned yellow, then finally, a few of them turned faintly green.

"It's responding." Chieu Bach Tuyen whispered, his voice filled with an emotion he no longer tried to hide — half hope, half nostalgia, half fear at the possibility that it would fail again as it had failed sixty years before.

But then, amidst the steady hum, a shrill hiss rang out from somewhere on the mechanical arm attached to the external monitoring dish, accompanied by a slight vibration that ran through the entire cavity structure, causing dust to fall from the ceiling like a small rain.

"Something's wrong." Bach Van said, his eyes glued to the pressure display board, where an index was fluctuating abnormally.

"The rotating mechanism of the monitoring disk." Chieu Bach Tuyen said, his voice tense, rushing to an auxiliary control panel whose exact location only he remembered. "It's been stuck for sixty years, now trying to move again following the automatic launch command. If we don't intervene in time, the mechanism could break completely, or worse, damage the protective outer shell of the ship's hull."

"What should I do?" Khe Lam asked, ready to act immediately.

"There's a manual pressure release valve, about thirty meters away, in the pipeline leading out of the main structure." He said, his hands shaking from both age and the pressure of the moment. "I'm not agile enough to get there in time anymore. Girl, you're a maintenance engineer, you know how to operate the manual valve better than anyone here."

Khe Lam didn't wait another second, rushing into the narrow corridor leading to the outer structure, her headlamp dancing with each hurried step through the twisted pipes, rusted joints that could break at any moment under her weight. She found the pressure release valve as described, her hand twisted it with all her might, feeling the rust resist with each rotation, until finally it gave in, a jet of air leaked out with great pressure, and the shrill hiss from the rotating mechanism gradually subsided, settling again.

She stood there, panting, her back leaning against the cold tube wall, feeling her heartbeat gradually slow down as the recent danger had been averted.

When she returned to the control center, Bach Van ran to hug her for a moment, without saying anything, just squeezing her tightly as if to confirm she was still safe. Uong Khac Tram and Chieu Bach Tuyen stood in front of the main display board, both of their eyes glued to a series of data that was starting to appear, slowly but continuously, for the first time in sixty years.

"It's working." Uong Khac Tram said, her voice trembling with surprise and excitement. "The monitoring dish has stabilized in position. The main sensor is collecting data."

Chieu Bach Tuyen stood silently in front of the display board, his hands trembling on the edge of the console as if to steady himself in the face of an emotion too big to name. "Sixty years." He whispered, his voice choked. "Sixty years later I wonder if I will be the last person to remember it, if everything I know will die with me."

Khe Lam walked over to stand next to him, placing a hand on his shoulder in a quiet gesture of comfort. "You're not the last, sir. Not anymore."

On the display board, raw data continued to pour in, numbers and symbols that only Chieu Bach Tuyen could fully understand right now, but all four people in that small room felt the same thing — they were standing on the threshold of a truth that had been buried, not through papers or words, but through the raw light, unedited by anyone, that had traveled light years to get here, waiting more patiently. any human being imaginable, until finally someone was willing to listen to what it had to say.

"How long will it take to get the full results analyzed?" Bach Van asked, his voice still shaking from the adrenaline of the dangerous encounter just now.

"A few hours, maybe longer." Chieu Bach Tuyen replied, sitting down in front of the control panel with a new concentration, his aged hands now moving with the precision of his younger days. "But for the first time in sixty years, I think we will truly know what lies ahead, not through anyone's promises, but through the eyes of this ship."

Beyond the metal shell that enveloped them, the giant observation dish continued to rotate slowly, aiming its sixty-year-old dusty lens toward the distant stars, collecting every photon of ancient light that carried the answer that the four people inside were waiting with bated breath, not knowing whether it would bring hope or a disappointment worse than anything they had ever prepared themselves to face.