Top-Tier Omega: Chasing Alpha to the Crematorium – Chapter 91
by Little PandaExtra 1
Covenant of the Starry Sky
Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows of the Presidential Palace, the first snow of winter was slowly drifting down onto the Federal Plaza.
Wu Lan signed the final document, the tip of her fountain pen making a crisp sound as it slid across the electronic screen. Ten years. This palace-like building finally no longer made her feel suffocated.
“Your Excellency, the handover ceremony begins in three hours,” the secretary reminded her softly. “The media are already waiting in the hall.”
Wu Lan looked up at the holographic projection of the Federation star map, where the regions once ravaged by war now glowed with the light of peace. She recalled the deafening cheers inside the Parliament Building when Qin Mian was impeached; she remembered the first time she stepped into this office as President, and she remembered Ming Yu attending her inauguration, with Song Qingpei standing at the very front of the medical department’s formation, winking at her.
“Give this list to the incoming president.” She pushed an encrypted file forward. “These people will be his best cabinet members.”
The secretary hesitated. “Are you really not planning to run for re-election? The approval ratings…”
“They’re more than enough.” Wu Lan stood up, her military uniform casting sharp shadows across her shoulders. “Tell logistics I only need to take my personal belongings.”
When dusk fell over the Presidential Palace, Wu Lan stood alone in her empty office.
The moving robots had already cleared away all official equipment, leaving only a potted Blue Tree on the windowsill. It was an inauguration gift from Song Qingpei. Now, it had grown to half a person’s height, its leaves shimmering with a deep, quiet blue in the snowy light.
She opened the bottom drawer and pulled out a picture frame. The woman in the photo was smiling at her with an arched brow, the medals pinned to her chest gleaming brightly enough to dazzle the eye.
Tracing the raised carvings with her fingers, Wu Lan let out a soft laugh. “Eldest Miss, wait for me a little longer.”
Under the spotlights on the Federal Plaza, Wu Lan stood in her silver-gray uniform. Dispensing with a speech manuscript, her voice carried directly to the ears of the hundred thousand people:
“Ten years ago, we overthrew a lie, but the truth is often far heavier than any falsehood.” Her gaze swept over Song Qingpei in the front row, who was holding her daughter’s small hand and waving at her. “The Blue Tree project, the illegal wartime experiments, the ordinary people who were sacrificed… these scars won’t disappear, but we can choose to let them serve as a warning rather than a shackle.”
A holographic projection expanded behind her, displaying the changes the Federation had undergone over the past decade: the coverage of the affordable inhibitor had reached ninety-three percent, the reconstruction plans for outer star systems, and the military academies’ abolition of the genetic tier system…
Finally, the image froze on a set of data: the political participation rate of Omegas had risen from seven percent to forty-one percent.
“Power is not a throne, but a responsibility,” Wu Lan raised her voice. “Now, it is time to hand this opportunity to more young people.”
Applause rang out like thunder.
Wu Lan walked off the stage with a smile. As she turned, a single snowflake happened to fall on her eyelashes, as cold as a distant kiss.
Before dawn, the Presidential Palace was dead silent.
Wu Lan placed the picture frame into her suitcase. The moment her fingertips brushed against the photo, her memories suddenly flared to life. She recalled the most severe susceptible period1 Zhan Nansheng had ever gone through, when the woman had broken into her home, eyes as red as a wild beast’s.
Wu Lan could have easily subdued her, but seeing her tremble had only piqued her interest.
“Eldest Miss, use this to calm down,” Wu Lan had playfully tossed her an inhibitor, only for Zhan Nansheng to smack it away.
“This isn’t what I want!” Zhan Nansheng pinned her against the wall. “You know perfectly well…”
In the end, Wu Lan hadn’t given her a temporary mark. The two of them lay on the floor, panting in exhaustion.
Zhan Nansheng turned her head to look at her, gritting her teeth. “Wu Lan, one of these days, I’ll have you.”
The click of the suitcase closing pulled her back from her thoughts.
Wu Lan tucked the photo into her pocket, stood up, and left the Presidential Palace.
She was going to keep a long-overdue date beneath the stars.
The Nightingale VII mech hovered silently at the edge of the asteroid belt. It was an upgraded version of the old Nightingale, its body entirely black except for a tiny red rose painted on the side of the cockpit.
It looked just like the Zhan Nansheng of the past.
Wu Lan programmed the autopilot coordinates and pulled out a bottle of strong liquor from beneath the console.
As the amber liquid burned down her throat, she turned on the holographic projection. Instantly, Zhan Nansheng’s image filled the cockpit, as if all her forcibly forgotten memories were flooding back at once.
“Eldest Miss,” Wu Lan raised her glass to the empty space. “It’s been ten years. You must be losing your patience, aren’t you?”
The mech glided through a blue nebula, and fragments of the Jackdaw’s wreckage began to appear outside the viewport.
Wu Lan shut off the engines, letting the mech drift slowly with the gravity. She unbuckled her safety harness and took out the photo she had caressed countless times from her breast pocket.
“Remember our first meeting?” Her fingertips gently touched the windblown hair in the photo. “You were as beautiful as a blooming rose, drawing everyone’s eyes at first glance…”
In her memories, Zhan Nansheng’s eyes had shone with a brilliant intensity, always defying and challenging her.
“…Yet you lost countless times and still didn’t give up.” Wu Lan chuckled, her bottle already half empty. “Only later did I realize that I, too, had long since fallen deep into the abyss without even knowing it…”
The holographic recorder suddenly emitted a chime, indicating a large piece of metallic wreckage five hundred meters ahead.
Wu Lan looked up sharply. An armor plate engraved with the Zhan family crest was drifting slowly by—it was a piece of the Jackdaw’s wreckage.
The alcohol suddenly turned bitter.
Wu Lan set down the bottle, her finger hovering over the self-destruct program’s activation key.
“In that final battle…” Her voice was hoarse beyond recognition. “You clearly could have shot me down…”
Back then, the Jackdaw’s cannons were locked onto the Nightingale’s engines. But Zhan Nansheng had suddenly turned, firing her last shell right into her own cockpit.
Wu Lan would always remember the soft laugh from the communication channel:
“…Wu Lan, now you’ll never be able to forget me.”
“Actually, the first time we met…” The strong liquor blurred her vision. “I already wanted to kiss you.”
Wu Lan pressed the photo against her chest and entered a long-unused password—the date of their first meeting.
“Self-destruct program initiated. Countdown: 30 seconds.”
The robotic female voice announced coldly, but Wu Lan only smiled.
She finished the last drop of liquor and leaned back in her seat, gazing at the mech wreckage drifting outside the viewport.
“Eldest Miss…” she whispered, “I miss you so much.”
The countdown hit zero.
The ship erupted into a brilliant flash of fire in the silent vacuum of space, exactly like the explosion years ago.
—This time, she had finally caught up to her.
Three hours later, Song Qingpei’s terminal received a scheduled message:
【Qingpei: Please help me give the potted Blue Tree to Song Song. Don’t be sad; I’m only going to keep a long-overdue date. — Wu Lan】
By the time Song Qingpei arrived, she saw only a newly sprouted Blue Tree seedling, growing quietly inside the capsule.
Under the pull of gravity, the two masses of metallic wreckage slowly drifted closer, intertwining like a long-overdue embrace.
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