Li Wei walked along the ship's corridors, taking in the somewhat cramped, run-down space, and felt a keen letdown.
"This place of yours…"
"Disappointing, isn't it? It's all put together, after all, out of three ships going on a century old; for comfort and good looks it can hardly stack up against a modern ship." Zhao Chen knew Li Wei's thoughts clear as day.
After a dozen-odd minutes of touring around, Li Wei left Blizzard Zero along with Zhao Chen.
"It really does look better from outside. But Old Zhao, how come your crew are all female beast-folk? I didn't know you leaned that way… Not that there's anything wrong with the kink — but ship warfare's no small business, you know." Li Wei looked at Zhao Chen with a word of caution.
Zhao Chen rolled his eyes. "I'm not as filthy-minded as you seem to think. There's a reason I recruited these female beast-folk crew. And they were crewwomen to begin with — they only fell to this state for certain reasons. You saw Blizzard Zero's battle just now, didn't you? Could a pack of pretty vases have fought a battle that clean?"
"Fair enough, when you put it that way. Oh — right, you said before you had something to ask my help with. What is it?" Li Wei brought up the request Zhao Chen had raised earlier.
Zhao Chen got down to business. "Your Li family's in the interstellar trade, aren't they — and I hear that these last few years you've branched into the starship-arms trade. As it happens, I've got a T1 ship here that I developed myself, and I'd like you to send this blueprint along to your family's people and see whether they have any interest in buying. But it has to be done quietly — I don't want too many people knowing about me, you understand. Even if your father asks, don't reveal my identity!"
"You want to sell a T1 ship you developed yourself?" Li Wei gave a start. "You can develop ships now, too?"
But on second thought — if Zhao Chen could assemble a ship with combat power fit to blow the roof off out of three aged vessels, then developing a T1 ship wasn't beyond the realm of possibility. The technical difficulty of a T1 ship wasn't especially high, after all; some T1 ship blueprints had even been made public for people to study from.
"I can't get my hands into the family-business side of things, so whether they'll buy your ship I can't promise. But I can put in a word with my sister — she was the one who proposed branching into the starship-arms trade in the first place, and she's the one who heads that side of the business in our group now. Only… our company's grown pretty gloomy about the whole venture. Four years running in the red now. Even the T1 ship we'd meant to release this year is still nowhere to be found. The shareholders' board has started leaning on us to give the business up." Li Wei laid it out.
Zhao Chen clapped Li Wei on the shoulder and handed him a storage stick no bigger than a thumb. "Whether we end up doing business together doesn't matter. All you need to do is get this thing in front of your Li family's people. Send this straight to your sister, encrypted. Remember — keep my identity a secret! If your sister asks, just make up some excuse."
"This has the T1 ship blueprint you mentioned inside it? And you're just handing it to me, easy as that? Is transmitting it over the network safe — or should I deliver it to my sister in person? The break's in a few days anyway; I'm planning to head home for a visit. I can tell you the result next term." Li Wei spoke cautiously.
A mere T1 blueprint it might be, but this was, all the same, the fruit of Zhao Chen's labor. It counted as a commercial secret — the sort of thing generally hand-delivered by a person, and only rarely sent over the network.
"It's fine, the file inside is already encrypted. Once you've sent it off, just let me know; I'll decrypt it remotely, and only then will they be able to view it. You can go send it right now, in fact — I'm pressed for time," said Zhao Chen.
Zhao Chen couldn't afford to wait until the end of term. His thinking was to trade this T1 ship technology for a sum of funds, and then find a way to build a true system starship.
Excellent as Blizzard Zero was, it was, when all was said, only an assembled ship.
"That so? Then I'll do it just as you say… but don't go pinning too much hope on it, all right?" Li Wei laid it out for Zhao Chen in advance, afraid that his sister might reject the blueprint down the line and leave Zhao Chen with a loss of face.
That sister of his, where business was concerned, was of a temperament that gave no quarter — she'd not spare even her own flesh and blood. Anything she wasn't satisfied with, she'd turn down flat.
"It's fine, just go do it. Leave the rest to me." Zhao Chen laughed.
So long as Li Wei's sister wasn't a fool, she was certain to see where this ship's worth lay.
"Right." Li Wei took his leave of Zhao Chen, went back to his dormitory, and, just as Zhao Chen had asked, sent the data on that storage stick off to his sister.
The file was no small thing, and being a cross-system transmission besides, it would take about a day. Li Wei sent his sister a text message ahead of time, mentioning the matter in passing.
Zhao Chen, for his part, went back to his own dormitory first. Though he now had a captain's cabin aboard Blizzard Zero, a good deal of his things were still in the dorm, and he needed to move them over to the ship. As it happened, the term was ending; when the time came he wouldn't even need to book a ticket — he could just ride Blizzard Zero straight back to his fief.
The dormitory was a single room, its space of course no match for the captain's cabin.
Zhao Chen sat down on the single bed, opened the system page, and went into the store-upgrade screen.
T1 System Store upgrade conditions:
First — redeem one T1-tier item (complete)
Second — complete one D-rank system mission (complete)
Third — spend 100 System points to upgrade the store (first two conditions met; may upgrade at any time)
Without a word, Zhao Chen tapped to upgrade the system store.
Confirm spending 100 System points to upgrade the T1 Store to the T2 Store? [Y/N]
"Confirm."
100 System points spent; T1 Store upgraded to T2 Store.
Your remaining System points: 250.
Congratulations — you have unlocked the T2 series of the system store, and gained one opportunity to redeem any item without the need for task points.
An unexpected windfall!
Zhao Chen had just been wondering how he was going to scrape up more task points, the better to redeem a T2 ship.
For the system store's rules laid down that redeeming an item required a corresponding number of task points.
Checking over the T2 series of products now, Zhao Chen found that a T2 item called for, of all things, three task points.
At the rate he was going, there was no telling how long it would take him to save up those three task points.
It seemed the higher an item's tier, the more System points it burned — and the more task points it demanded, too.
Zhao Chen took a glance while he was at it: to upgrade the T2 Store to a T3 Store would require completing two C-rank missions, redeeming two T2-tier items, and spending 2,000 System points — a difficulty ratcheted up enormously.
All that was beyond Zhao Chen's means to consider for now; the real business came first.
And the real business, of course, was picking a ship!
"Let's have a look — this first true ship of ours, which one to choose?" Zhao Chen set to sifting through the options, more in earnest than the time before.
Because the ship he chose this time would be his first starship in the true sense.
Blizzard Zero counted as only half a first.
Should it be an interstellar destroyer… or an interstellar cruiser… or perhaps an interstellar battleship?
Zhao Chen picked this way and that.
At the last, his eyes came to rest on a single option.
A T2… carrier starship…
This one, then!