Zhao Chen won?
Hearing the girl say this, the students in the room were all taken aback.
Those seated farther off even wondered whether they'd misheard.
"How could Zhao Chen possibly win? You didn't misread it, did you?" a boy asked with a light chuckle.
"It's posted right there on the academy intranet forum. Don't believe me? See for yourselves." The girl enlarged the holographic screen before her so that everyone around could see.
On the hot-search board, one post was climbing at an astonishing rate.
The title read: [Zhao Chen Defeats Zhang Haoran, Takes the Starship Duel! A Shocking 1200mm Heavy Cannon — a Single Shot Straight Home Sends Off the T2 Bald Eagle]
Besides this one, there were in fact several other related posts, though none of them ran anywhere near as hot.
Because this post carried the full video clip!
It even gave that 1200mm heavy cannon a close-up and a detailed rundown.
"Zhao Chen won? That's impossible." Some students still didn't believe it, and had the girl open the duel video.
"Only five minutes? This video's a fake, isn't it?" One student, noticing the clip's length, questioned it at once.
A duel between ships of the same tier generally took half an hour at the very least — and there were even some that dragged on for hours of tangled, ferocious fighting, no telling how long.
How could it possibly be a mere five minutes?
But the footage that followed shut every last one of them up.
Even the teacher, drawn in and lingering rather than leaving, gathered round to watch the holographic screen.
From Blizzard Zero's hundred-star-knot high-speed evasion of the T2 Bald Eagle-class Light Interstellar Cruiser's laser main cannon—
—to Blizzard Zero dropping from 100 star-knots to a full standstill in five seconds flat—
—and the splendid scenes that came after.
When the 1200mm giant gun made its appearance, the blood of more than a few of the boys in the room fairly boiled.
Then they watched the giant gun fire, its single shot striking home and crippling the T2 Bald Eagle in one blow.
It shook every one of them!
"Good heavens! This… how could Zhao Chen's ship have a 1200mm giant gun?" a student exclaimed.
The teacher stepped forward at this, gulped hard, and said in some astonishment, "If I'm not mistaken, this ought to be the T2 heavy 1200mm cannon carried by the T2 Devil-Croc-class Medium Interstellar Battleship!"
At the teacher's words, the students fell to murmuring among themselves.
Even now, there were still some who suspected the video had been doctored.
It was not until someone dug up the result announcement for today's starship duel, posted on the academy's official-site duel channel, that the truth of the matter was finally settled.
Starship Duel No. 3030062701 — duelists Zhang Haoran and Zhao Chen — winner: Zhao Chen.
Even Monitor Shen Bing, at this moment, was playing the video on her handheld terminal, watching it through again and again, disbelief in her eyes. He had truly won.
"Damn! My brother's the best! My brother won!" Only now did Li Wei come back to himself, and his excitement was such that anyone would have thought the victor was he. He jabbed a finger around the room, and spoke without the least restraint. "See that! This is my brother — Li Wei's brother. Every one of you was sneering and jeering just now, all but wishing my brother gone. And what happened? My brother lands a single shot, straight home, and that Zhang Haoran isn't fit to so much as carry my brother's shoes. You pack of snobs — go find yourselves somewhere cool to sit and cool off."
His piece said, Li Wei paid no mind to the ugly looks on his classmates' faces and ran straight out; he was off to find Zhao Chen and get to the bottom of it.
This guy had actually won!
This guy was definitely keeping something from him.
After this mocking dressing-down from Li Wei, not a soul in the Class 8 room dared make a peep.
Even the teacher had lost face over it — for his own earlier attitude had been to assume, past all doubt, that Zhao Chen would lose; and now Li Wei's words landed like so many slaps across their cheeks.
——————
Blizzard Zero lay berthed within the Northstar Starship Military Academy's starport, at a ship berth Zhao Chen had reserved well in advance.
Because Blizzard Zero had, in this battle, taken essentially no hull damage at all, there was no need for any repair work.
"All right, then. Mission accomplished. You're free to move about within the areas of the ship you're permitted." Zhao Chen clapped Deputy Captain Charlotte on the shoulder.
In truth, Zhao Chen's gaze had settled on that furry head of Charlotte's; he had a mind to give it a rub and find out what this white-tiger beast-woman felt like. But it stayed no more than a passing thought.
Those sharp tiger-fangs of Charlotte's hadn't grown in for show.
His eyes traveled on, and lit upon that pair of broken white ears.
The sight of them was a truly pitiable one — and it marred the whole of her looks besides.
Zhao Chen hardened his resolve once more: in the future, without fail, he would have Charlotte's body mended. She was his deputy captain now, after all; call it a crew benefit.
"Yes," Deputy Captain Charlotte answered quietly.
Zhao Chen left the bridge and returned to his own captain's cabin.
Stepping into the captain's cabin, he found the space no small thing — some 50 square meters.
It had a bedroom, a sitting room, a desk, even a bathroom fit for a proper wash.
Aged as the layout of this decades-old ship might be, the treatment afforded its captain was, all the same, quite fine.
Zhao Chen had been to look at the ship's crew quarters, which rather resembled a school dormitory from his past life, only more cramped still.
A single dormitory room held six triple-tier folding-pad bunks, enough to house 18 people; the aisle running down the middle of the bunks was under a meter wide, and all 18 shared a single washroom.
That smell… decades on, Zhao Chen felt it had left him with a lingering aftertaste.
Even a starship, it turned out, ran into a serious shortage of space, and so the living quarters of the ordinary crew had to be squeezed down as far as they'd go — though there were, of course, single and double rooms set aside expressly for a ship's senior officers.
And the present situation was more dire still: the quarters, meant to house 50 crew posts, now had 100 beast-folk crew crammed into them.
No small number of the beast-folk crew had to bed down on the floor.
So, by comparison, Zhao Chen's living conditions were downright luxurious.
"Whew." Zhao Chen flung himself down onto the big bed.
He savored the comfort of it for a few seconds, then set about the real business at hand.
Having defeated Zhang Haoran, Zhao Chen's mission system had already flagged the task as complete some time ago, awaiting only that he claim his reward.
Mission: Issue a starship duel to Zhang Haoran, and defeat him in the duel.
Difficulty: D-rank
Reward: one task point and 300 points
Failure penalty: 300 points deducted
Mission complete. Please claim your reward.
At a flick of Zhao Chen's thought—
Mission reward claimed: 300 points and one task point.
At this, these rewards showed up added to Zhao Chen's interface.
Host: Zhao Chen
Profession: Master Starship Engineer
Special Attribute: fleet Luck-value bonus, Eye of Insight
Points: 400
Task points: 1
Starships: 1
Mission: Quarterly Mission (incomplete)
Warehouse: T3 Blizzard-class Light Interstellar Battlecruiser blueprint
His points had gone from the original 100 to 400, and there was now one task point besides.
"I've got a task point now — let's see whether I can redeem something good out of the store!" Zhao Chen opened the system store and went looking for a target.