Watching its prey stride off into the distance, the swarm gave chase a while longer, then — realizing it plainly could not catch up — gave up too, left only to gape their maws wide as if roaring in fury.
T3 Blizzard-class Light Interstellar Battlecruiser — Bridge
"Check the hull's condition; see whether we can enter Blizzard Extreme-Cruise Mode," said Zhao Chen.
Lilith set to reviewing the hull data at once and soon had an answer: "Damage in several places, but nothing that stops us entering Extreme-Cruise Mode. Still — best to hold our speed under 600 star-knots."
600 knots was hardly fast, but as long as they didn't run headlong into another swarm with a T3 Hive Mothership in it, slipping safely out of this hive-race-controlled region would be no trouble at all.
Zhao Chen chuckled. "Then make ready for Extreme-Cruise Mode — it's time we left this wretched place. These bugs really are too eager. Damn this charm of mine — we'll host them properly next time."
"Yes. Engine high-load state released; preparing to enter Blizzard Extreme-Cruise Mode." Charlotte carried out the order.
The weapon modules across the Blizzard's surface began to fold away beneath the hull armor — though, thanks to the battle, some had been knocked out of true and couldn't fully retract. That was exactly why Lilith had warned against too much speed: press it, and parts of the armor likely wouldn't hold.
In the hangar
The teachers and students of the two academies were awash in elation — this time they had truly cheated death.
"I'd never have imagined a battlecruiser like this could have such terrifying combat power."
"A single T3 Interstellar Battlecruiser, fighting alone, not only comes away whole — it killed one T3 Hive Mothership and crippled another! An unbelievable result!"
"I've never seen this class before. Could it be a ship our Northstar Starship Military Academy developed in secret?"
Snatched from death, the two academies' people were soon captivated by the very ship carrying them. Some instructors had already begun analyzing it from what they'd just witnessed.
"Interstellar missiles, drones, close-in guns, secondaries, main cannons, and a cluster-laser bow cannon! A loadout like that — never mind our Starlight Empire, there isn't a battlecruiser in the whole Galactic Alliance with a configuration this fearsome."
"Battlecruiser, nothing — half the T3 Interstellar Battleships in active service don't carry weapons this strong. If the hull weren't so plainly a battlecruiser's, I'd have taken it for a battleship outright!"
Instructor Qin listened to the professors debate, then turned her eyes to the cosmos beyond the viewport — and only now did she let out a breath from the very bottom of her chest. She had led the Northstar Starship Military Academy's people out here; had they all been buried in this place, she would have been the academy's one great sinner. From the bottom of her heart, she was grateful to that young man named Zhao Chen.
Just then a layer of hull armor began sliding across the viewport, sealing off the view outside. But the two academies' people, delivered from death, no longer cared — they were busy chattering about the battle just past, and about all the eating and drinking and merrymaking they meant to do once they got home.
Bridge
Zhao Chen looked at Charlotte, whose face had eased; she showed little outward feeling, but plainly she too had let out a breath. He rose and gave her head a pat. "Nicely done."
Charlotte gave a full-body shiver, her tail shooting bolt upright. She sprang away, clutching her head, cheeks faintly red, and eyed him warily. "Don't… don't… don't pat my head."
"Hah — no more patting this time, then." Zhao Chen lowered his hand. Say what you liked, this feline's hair had a fine feel to it — he only wondered how the tail felt.
Perhaps sensing his gaze, Charlotte's tail promptly curled up tight.
"Our Blizzard, after this fight — Lilith, get me the detailed figures on combat expenditure and hull wear, quick as you can." Zhao Chen settled back into the captain's chair, handing off the task.
Lilith nodded and set to tallying the battle.
As for Zhao Chen, his gaze shifted; he pulled up the System page. Back on the seventh planet of the Water Lily Star System he'd killed a heap of bugs and cleared a System mission — but with time so short then, he'd had no chance to claim the reward and had set it aside. Now that the danger had passed, he took the moment to see just what he'd earned.
Mission: By your own strength, kill bugs within the time limit.
Difficulty: C-rank
Reward: for each threshold reached within the time (1, 10, 100, 1,000…), a reward scaled to your final kill tier.
Time limit: ten minutes
1,000+ hive-race units slain! Mission complete — please claim your reward.
Zhao Chen willed it, and claimed the reward.
Reward claimed: T3 Goddess Academy-class starship blueprints.
Goddess Academy? Zhao Chen blinked. What sort of odd ship was that?
He began reading through the detailed blueprints — and what he found was extraordinary. His eyes lit up as though he'd laid eyes on a peerless beauty.
The T3 Goddess Academy was an auxiliary-type vessel — as the name suggested, an academy ship. It carried training programs for a whole range of professions, outfitted with advanced instruments like full simulation-training pods: a Captain track, an Interstellar Crew track, Starship Engineering, Medical, Interstellar Combat-Mecha, Interstellar Fighter… comprehensive to a fault. The Goddess Academy could hold only 10,000 trainees, yet it wanted for nothing inside — everything Northstar Academy had, it had too.
Better still, it needed no instructors: it came with built-in holographic simulation-tutors running the most advanced teaching programs in the cosmos. Under the twin support of those tutors and the simulation pods, a trainee with no starship background at all could go from enrollment to graduation — if only certifying as a junior interstellar crewman — in a single week. The higher the professional grade and the deeper the specialization, of course, the longer it took. It could even cultivate scientists in starship theory.
A T3 Goddess Academy was, quite simply, a factory for turning out talent.
There was one catch, though: it could train only female students. That, it seemed, had something to do with the "luck bonus" Zhao Chen had rolled earlier.