Vow of Silver Dawn Chapter 55

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PDF Link: https://mega.nz/file/6MEyVZgL#LUli4M6qM9Fjxl7hTAE6RSnnNqV71eGBpKLx3nSVq_8
Plenty of footnotes this time around so a stronger recommendation
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Chapter 54: A Secret Revealed
By 国王陛下, Translated by 74translations

	The Hongxing, known for its exceptional speed and manoeuverability, came to a sudden halt before the pirates, the light extinguished from its engines, left to gently list as though debris in the void of space. Then, equally as sudden, it was bombarded from every direction.

	This time, there was no miracle, and the ship met the fire head-on. Its shields flickered and faded, and its armor was scored and smashed by the incoming fire. The narrow ship was relentlessly raked with blaster fire, which completely sheared its left wing from its body.

	In an instant, to the utter surprise of the pirates, the thin ship, that was like a demon while in action, had suddenly turned off completely.

	"Squadron Leader, what's going on?"

	"Suicide, maybe?" One of the pirates suggested.

	"Probably an engine blowout," another pirate answered, "they were doing all kinds of crazy stuff, it couldn't have gone on forever, if their engine suddenly exploded it wouldn't be surprising."

	"What's the hold up? Finish 'em off with a proton torpedo and be done with it!"

	"Hold it!," shouted the pirate's captain over their comms, "Have you all forgotten about the Xuanming? And that's not any ship, that's the Hongxing! They say within the Silver Knights, that ship's custom modifications are only second to the Baiyin herself! The stuff that ship’s made of is priceless! Is that a prize you want to risk damaging?"

	"But..." began one of the pirates.

	"What are you afraid of? You scared of that helpless floating space garbage?" the captain demanded.

	Within the Qinglong, there was nothing more shameful than to be seen as a coward, so when the captain made his accusation, the squadron comms fell silent.

	"One, Three, go catch up with the freighter, don't let them escape. Everyone else, on me. The Xuanming we might have to return, but everything else is ours for the taking. Let's make sure we get the best bits before the rest of the squads get their grubby mits on her."

	While giving the order, the squadron captain flew his fighter in close to the Hongxing and began using a magnetic clamp to gather up the fragments of black plating that had come off the ship, and collect them in the fighter's limited cargo hold.

	Without hesitation the rest of the pirates followed suit, and like a flock of ravenous vultures descending upon a corpse, surrounded the ship.

	As the Hongxing was a fair bit larger than a single-pilot fighter, most of the larger and more valuable components would have to salvaged later by others.

	But even those shattered fragments were quite valuable, and as the pirates had deduced, the Hongxing's outer plating was a layer of the famed xuantie, known throughout the Qian System to be both quite uncommon and remarkably suited to vehicle armour, two or three times stronger than the next comparable material——but over a hundred times more expensive.

	In fact, the pirates generally suspected that were it not for this layer of xuantie plating, when the ship suffered its engine failure it would've likely simply become nought but a ball of fire.

	And now the pirates were peeling that layer of valuable metal off as spoils.

	The pirates had not questioned their victory in the slightest, as before their eyes sat the Hongxing, that from whatever angle appeared to have been utterly defeated. The ship emitted no light and every inch of it was battered and burnt, with broken electricals and piping splayed outwards from beneath sections where armour had been stripped, occasionally weakly sparking.

	So the Pirates continued to gorge themselves, until one of them suddenly discovered a surprise blip on their radar.

	"Wait a minute, there's still people alive aboard the Hongxing!?"

	Though that was not met with the most appropriate responses.

	"Are you blind? Look at the ship, how could anyone still be alive inside?"

	"If there's any survivors then all the better, Silver Knight prisoners of war might be worth more than the ship itself."

	Such was the general attitude of their comms, filled with triumphant bluster.

	Their captain's greed had long since eclipsed his rationality, all caution having fled his mind——All that remained was a desire to claim as much xiantie for himself as possible, and having apparently vanquished the Hongxing Squad he had the grounds upon which to challenge Longtou.

	It was while they were riding this triumphant high that this silent, corpse-like ship suddenly revealed its ferocity.

	Without warning, its six laser cannons suddenly open fired, instantly piercing three fighters' shields, turning them into fireballs.

	And it was in this momentary off-balance that concussion missiles obliterated another three fighters.

	With that discharge of weapons, only the pirate captain remained alive.

A solitary fighter against a very much alive Hongxing was like a single leaf faced off against a storm.

	"I... I surrender..."

	As the fighter began to transmit its surrender, it was obliterated by another shot.

	——

	"Ha..."

	Within the Hongxing's cockpit, Lü Nan let out a long sigh as she pushed the control column aside so she could lean recline her seat.

	Going from utterly dead to instantly destroying six fighters wasn't an easy task, even for Lü Nan, to say nothing of the fact the ship had gone into "break out" mode and was functioning quite below optimal levels. The crew as a whole was a bit rattled.

	While taking aim through the severely damaged fire control systems, Lü Nan had felt as though she had taken two people's worth of spice, her head spinning, and had more or less fired on gut feeling.

	Fortunately, her shots had found their marks.

	From behind, An Ping gave her backrest a hard knock.

	"Nicely done."

	"Hmph."

	"All right, let's get ready to get the ship going again. Uncle Xu, go around and check no-one's hurt, and then let's see what we can salvage. Xiao'en, get on fixing... Xiao'en?"

	As he spoke, An Ping suddenly realized that their newbie, who was previously keeping an eye on the radar, was nowhere to be found.

	Astonished, An Ping turned on a flashlight that emerged from his mechanical arm, illuminating the pitch-black cabin with rays of light.

	But under the new beams of light  Shawn was nowhere to be found.

	——

	Elsewhere, amidst the pitch darkness, Shawn cautiously approached a young woman who had curled herself up into a corner.

	"Zhuang, are you all right?"

	As he spoke, Shawn couldn't help but wrinkled his nose: As he drew closer, the smell of blood grew stronger, and it seemed less and less likely that Zhuang would be "all right."

	He had come following that smell of blood. Those in the cockpit had been basically unharmed, but Zhuang had not been so prepared, so he rushed off to try and help.

	Shawn was glad he brought along Uncle Xu's first aid kit. Even if the medicines contained within were a mystery to him and would be quite dangerous to simply "try out," there was also a bacta spray.

	"I-I'm fine," came her voice, somewhat softly, weakly.

	Shawn immediately switched on his light, which was met with a gasp of surprise.

	Under the light, the young woman tried to shield herself from it with a hand, but to no avail.

	Shawn had already gotten a clear look at her face.

	Beneath the light, Zhuang looked deathly pale, with a not inconsequential cut on her head, but what really caught Shawn's eyes were a pair of horns, jutting from either side of her forehead.

	Milky white, about ten centimetres long, smoothly curving backwards, they looked much like some manner of delicate ornaments, and seemed to complement her face.

	This was the first time Shawn had seen her without her hat——the one she slept, ate, and worked in.

	He hadn't thought for a moment it was concealing a secret like this!

	Zhuang, aware that her secret was now out, just sighed and put down her hand.

	It was then the rest of the cockpit's crew had come over.

	An Ping saw Shawn with the light, carrying the first aid kit, standing in the doorway, and too let out a long sigh.

	"Captain, there's still time to administer an amnestic punch!" Uncle Xu suggested from behind him.

	"That won't be necessary," An Ping said, "In the end he's one of us now, and there are some things he'd have to learn sooner or later."

	Uncle Xu shrugged, "You're the captain, you get the final say."

	As he spoke, Uncle Xu pushed his way past An Ping to Shawn's side, wresting possession of the first aid kit away from him.

	"All right, stay in your lane, this case is my treasure. What do you recognize aside from the bacta? If all you can do is spray then you're no different from Lü Nan. If you wanna do what I do, then you'd best get at least ten years of study in!"

	And so he prattled on as he went to Zhuang's side, skillfully putting a stop to her bleeding, as well as carefully gathering up the blood that hat spilled and depositing it in a test tube.

	Shawn watched with brow furrowed.

	In his mind, that strange vision appeared to him again, and again as though the Force had some information to reveal to him, but it passed just as quick and once more Shawn was unable to make sense of it.

	An Ping patted Shawn on the shoulder, "We'll talk about this later, right now there's still work to be done."


Translation Notes
None! Again again! Here’s a note from me, well, from me and not pertaining to linguistics anyways: Has Zhuang ever been physically described to any length? I genuinely can’t remember. At any rate backwards curving horns to my mind brings up Ganyu, from Genshin Impact, which personally I always thought was an interesting choice because it is a Chinese-developed game and everyone over there calls it Yuanshen. I suppose it is the case that Mihoyo are gigantic weebs, and if nothing else the western market would be generally more receptive to something that is apparently Japanese and not apparently Chinese.

肖恩 - xiāo'ēn - Shawn, Jedi Apprentice
莫斯提马 - mòsītímǎ - Mastema, Jedi Master
李钰 - lǐ yù - Li Yu, Commander of the Silver Knights
白 - bái - Bai, Li Yu’s droid
安平 - ānpíng - An Ping, Captain of the Hongxing Squad
吕楠 - lǚnán - Lü Nan, Hongxing Squad Sniper
许伯 - xǔbó - Uncle Xu, Hongxing Squad Medic
庄原瑛 - zhuāngyuányīng - Zhuang Yuanying, Hongxing Squad Engineer
宁涛 - níngtāo - Ning Tao, ex-Qiankun Corp Military big shot
龙头 - lóngtóu - Longtou, ostensibly a title more than a name; the Dragon’s Head of the Qinglong

https://74translations.wordpress.com/

Thanks for reading!