Police officer Chen Shu

Chapter 330 Emergency Return to the Team

Around 7 p.m. on Saturday, at Dongzhou South Station, the spacecraft control center.

Wang Kai, the shift leader who had just taken cold medicine, slumped back in his office chair, feeling weak all over. He looked out the window at the raging lightning bolts, his right eyelid twitching uncontrollably.

"Long!"

"rumble!"

"Rumble!"

He reached for the walkie-talkie on the table, pressed the intercom button, and called out, "Ding Anci, Ding Anci, this is Wang Kai. Please respond if you hear me."

When I released the intercom button, there was no sound at all from the walkie-talkie.

Wang Kai turned the volume up to the maximum and called several times, even calling other colleagues, but there was no response except for a buzzing sound coming from the receiver due to signal interference.

"Hey!"

At that moment, a series of intermittent sounds came from the walkie-talkie.

"I'm resigning."

The analog walkie-talkies, which are uniformly provided by the spacecraft department, are easily affected by thunderstorms. For example, today, with so much lightning, the walkie-talkies have to shut down.

A short while later, his colleague Ding Anci came in with a cup of hot tea and said with a smile, "Wang Kai, what's up? The walkie-talkie signal is bad, I can't hear what you're saying."

"Well, nothing's wrong. It's just that with all this thunder outside, my heart is pounding, and I have this feeling that something bad is going to happen."

Ding Anci followed Wang Kai's gaze to the window and exclaimed, "The lightning strikes one after another. I've been in Dongzhou for so many years and I've hardly ever seen anything like it."

Wang Kai pursed his lips, a sense of unease creeping into his heart: "Old Ding, why don't you go around and take a look at the fire safety facilities, just in case?"

Ding Anci lowered his head, took a sip of tea, and agreed.

At this moment, the computer in front of Wang Kai suddenly emitted a series of warning sounds, and then the computer screen began to flash red, yellow and green colors in an irregular pattern.

Wang Kai was startled and rushed to the screen, staring intently at the track circuit displayed on it.

Seeing this, Ding Anci panicked and stood behind Wang Kai, looking at the computer screen, complaining, "Wang Kai, what's wrong? What happened?"
Ugh! There are hardly any people at the station late at night, and I don't know who to ask for! Plus, the equipment was just upgraded last year.

"Stop arguing!"

Wang Kai, who was already feeling unwell due to a cold, was in a hurry when Ding Anci kept nagging in his ear, and he blurted out something in his haste.

"Red light band!"

Wang Kai pointed to a reddish corner on the terminal display and said in a deep voice, "Contact the East China Sea dispatch station immediately and report the situation."

"Okay okay."

This was the first time Ding Anci had encountered such a situation, and he was anxious, but he also knew the ironclad rule that the first thing to do in any situation was to report to one's superior.

He picked up the walkie-talkie from the table and started switching channels.

"Hey! Use your phone!" Wang Kai shouted.

……

That evening, an electric spacecraft numbered 333 traveled rapidly and steadily on its predetermined orbit, only about ten kilometers away from its destination, Dongzhou Station.

The driver, dressed in blue overalls, sat upright in the cockpit at the bow of the ship, his eyes fixed ahead.

Although the fully automated intelligent navigation system basically eliminates the need for the pilot's personal involvement, for someone who has only held a spaceship pilot's license for less than two years, the responsibility for the safety of the hundreds of passengers behind him is no small matter.

He took out his phone and glanced at it. There were voice messages and pictures sent by his wife. The voice messages were obviously about trivial family matters; the pictures were most likely from his son, who would be starting elementary school in the fall.

Thinking of this, the driver couldn't help but smile.

He was nearly forty years old. He had started studying diligently in his thirties so that his wife and son could have a better life. After a series of exams and training sessions, he finally completed his transformation from a flight attendant to a driver.

The driver put his phone back in his pocket, planning to reply to his wife during the brief stop at Dongzhou Station.

If we're lucky, we might even get to have a video chat with them. The electric spaceship entered the tunnel, and it was pitch black outside the window, making it hard to see anything and giving us a bit of a headache.

The pilot squinted, focusing on what lay ahead. Years of experience had taught him that the brief period of "blindness" that would occur when the spacecraft emerged from the tunnel would result in visual distortion.

"call!"

The spaceship immediately exited the tunnel.

It was night outside, and the blindness wasn't particularly severe.

At this moment, the pilot discovered that an electric spaceship was slowly moving in sync with the established trajectory not far ahead.

In a split second, he immediately pressed the brake button!

The boat's speed decreased slightly.

The driver switched to manual mode, grabbed the brake lever on the right side of the dashboard with his right hand, and pulled it back forcefully.

The handle didn't budge!
He gritted his teeth and lunged forward from the side, pressing his chest against the blunt brake lever. He gripped the brake lever tightly with both hands, trying to use his body weight to move the extremely heavy manual brake.

Feeling the ship's speed rapidly decreasing, he relaxed slightly from his stiff posture and glanced ahead.

However, all I could see was darkness.

"boom!"

Around 8 p.m., a torrential downpour began, accompanied by thunder and lightning.

The sudden downpour forced Chen Shu, who hadn't brought an umbrella, to stand under the eaves of a shop on Jiefang Street to shelter from the rain.

He touched the new outfit he had just bought at Yintai that afternoon, and looking at the Chanyun Shopping Mall so close by, he still couldn't bear to brave the rain and wade through the water to go home.

I took out my phone, ready to scroll through Douyin for a while, and then slowly walk back after the rain stopped. Anyway, it's Saturday, so it doesn't matter if I walk earlier or later.

Just then, the phone screen lit up, and Captain Li Da called.

"Hey, Li Da, what's up?"

Chen Shu answered the phone, glancing at the incessant rain outside and the numerous puddles of unknown depth on the ground, and suddenly an idea came to him.

In a little while, you can call a Didi ride-hailing service to take him directly to the underground parking lot of the shopping mall, and then he can go back to his home upstairs from there. That way, he'll only get a little wet when he gets in the car, and then he'll be clean.

He really didn't want to get his new clothes and shoes, which he had just bought that afternoon, wet or dirty.

"Chen Shu, return to the team immediately."

Chen Shu's heart skipped a beat; could something serious have happened?

Phone,
On the phone, Li Da paused for a moment, seemingly processing the order he had just received. He then slowly explained the reason: "Two electric spaceships collided on an overpass near Yangyi Street."

Chen Shu nearly dropped his phone, saying, "Impossible. These spaceships travel on single tracks, how could they possibly collide?"

"I don't know the specifics either. The order I just received is to assemble the team and head to the scene immediately."

"Understood, I'm coming right now."

Chen Shu hung up the phone, his eyes glazed over, unable to process this earth-shattering news for a long time.

Spaceships travel at extremely high speeds and carry a large number of people; if the two ships were to collide, countless people would die.

Like a dream, just minutes before, Chen Shu was standing under a shop along the street, worrying about getting his clothes and shoes wet on his way home, when a phone call urgently calling him back to his team abruptly ended his troubles.

After putting his phone away, he strode across the street to the underground parking lot of Chanyun Shopping Mall.

He had to drive to work as fast as he could immediately.

There must be many trapped people waiting for them to rescue them.

Yes, go save them!
Human life!

(End of this chapter)