Mission: Rescue the trapped students of the Northstar Starship Military Academy and the Heaven's Glory Noble Starship Military Academy.
Difficulty: B-rank
Reward: 20 task points and 6,000 points.
Bonus objective: Rescue at least one hundred teachers and students — Zhao Wan'er, Su Lan, and Xue Xiaoxiao among them.
Two academies' people rescued: 100/100. Bonus objective complete — please claim your reward.
Mission complete — please claim your reward.
The mission-complete chime sounded in Zhao Chen's mind. So it seemed that as long as he delivered these hundred teachers and students safely to some starport beyond the hive-race's reach, the mission counted as done. 100 to rescue — and this time Zhao Chen had saved nearly 200, well over target. He wondered whether the System might throw in a little extra.
A thought, and he claimed the reward.
Bonus reward claimed: T3 Phantom Assassin-class Light Interstellar Stealth Bomber — blueprints.
Reward claimed: 20 task points and 6,000 points.
Task points, system points, and a ship blueprint — a fine haul this time. Opening his data panel, Zhao Chen could see a great store of points and task points, plus a whole series of ship blueprints he'd yet to build and commission.
Host: Zhao Chen
Profession: Top-tier Starship Engineer
Special Attributes: Fleet Luck Bonus · Eye of Insight
Points: 14,720
Task points: 84
Ships: 30
Mission: Annual Mission (incomplete)
Warehouse: T3 Phantom Assassin-class Light Interstellar Stealth Bomber blueprints · T3 Goddess Academy-class blueprints · T2 Lion King-class Heavy Interstellar Missile Ship blueprints · T2 Snow Mastiff-class Heavy Interstellar Battleship blueprints · T3 Andromeda-class Interstellar Medical Ship blueprints…
All of it was Zhao Chen's accumulated store; once the present business was behind him, he could raise a monstrously strong fleet on the strength of it.
"An interstellar stealth bomber — now there's a rare, out-of-fashion class." Zhao Chen was keenly interested in the design. As he understood it, back when T2 ships were still the mainstay of battle, stealth bombers had been all the rage. In those days no one had star shields. Because the interstellar stealth bomber prized firepower, its weapons were usually mid-to-short-range interstellar torpedoes — short reach, but staggering punch. Relying on its cloak to slip in close, it would rain a barrage on the enemy's capital ships, to devastating effect.
But the arrival of T3 ships and star-shield technology sent the stealth bomber abruptly out of favor. The reason was simple: with shields in play, even a T3-grade stealth bomber struggled to pull off a "decapitation." A stealth bomber was never a sturdy ship; if it couldn't wipe out its target fast, that meant facing an enemy fleet's encirclement while deep in their midst. A T3 stealth bomber could mount a star shield — but T3 shield tech guarded only one face, and driving deep into the enemy camp meant foes on every side. Add that it cost a fortune to build, and the whole proposition was miserably cost-inefficient. Little by little, it faded into an unloved class.
Zhao Chen was curious just how this System-issue version of that unloved class would measure up.
Phantom Assassin-class Light Interstellar Stealth Bomber
Class: interstellar stealth bomber
Tech level: T3
Hull armor: 1,000–1,200 units
Star shield energy: 20,000 units
Cruising speed: 300 star-knots
Warp drive: grade-6
Length: 490 meters
Mass: 120,000 tons
Crew: 50
Weapons: 10-cell vertical-launch silo (10 optical-mimicry missiles, 20 short-range heavy anti-ship missiles, 20 short-range heavy cluster bombs); 10-tube torpedo bank (200 heavy short-range particle torpedoes); 50 laser close-in guns.
Special: Phantom cloaked-flight mode (10 seconds to enter cloak).
One look, and even Zhao Chen was taken aback. Set the terrifying armament aside for a moment — the real black-tech was this: a T3-grade ship fitted with T4 star-shield technology. The first warship to date to carry a T4 shield.
What was the difference between T4 and T3 shield tech? Simple: T3 could shield only one face, while T4 protected the whole ship. Sustaining a T4 shield demanded a very powerful engine and power system — until now, only T4-grade engines and power plants could support one — which was why it was regarded as a near-exclusive technology of T4 warships. And now, here it was on a T3 interstellar stealth bomber. It was, quite simply, strapping a suit of heavy armor onto an assassin.
Why had the stealth bomber fallen from favor? Precisely because targets had shields while its own guarded only one face, leaving it easily surrounded and cut down. Now this T3 Phantom Assassin carried T4 shield tech — and its shield energy was so monstrous it already exceeded the T3 Blizzard-class Light Interstellar Battlecruiser's. What did that mean? Zhao Chen was inclined to call this ship a "heavy" stealth bomber.
"This is an absolute weapon for running decapitation strikes on an enemy fleet's flagship!" Zhao Chen was thrilled — right up until he worked out the build cost of a single Phantom Assassin, and his face soured. This one ship, only half the length of the T3 Blizzard, cost more to build than the Blizzard had: 15 million star coins apiece.
"Now I see why this class went out of fashion. It's too damn expensive." Zhao Chen didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Cloak or no, it wasn't invincible: for the stretch while it fired its weapons, the ship automatically dropped out of cloak — and there were warships fitted with anti-stealth detection besides. All told, outside of certain battlefields, its cost-effectiveness wasn't high.
"Field a few, then — no need to build them in bulk." Zhao Chen rubbed his chin, running the sums in his head. For certain jobs not suited to being done out in the open, this cloaked ship would serve nicely. And that was a delicious thought indeed.