At this moment,
not far from the battlefield,
a special fleet lay in wait here,
made up of T4 Shadow-Demon-class Light Interstellar Stealth Bombers.
On one of the starships,
Marshal Chu Xuan and Zhao Chen were both present.
The captain stood on the command platform and did not dare turn her head even for a moment.
She had never in her wildest dreams imagined that her own ship would one day actually receive Marshal Chu Xuan and the Fierce Dragon Emperor,
and for a small battle right now between three hundred starships and a hive-race planet at that.
Could it be… that the prodigy fleet captain was…
A certain possibility came to her mind, but she did not dare think further.
She was only a captain; she need only do what she ought to do.
As for anything else:
see no impropriety, hear no impropriety, speak no impropriety!
On the sofa at the back,
Zhao Chen looked at Marshal Chu Xuan sitting beside him.
"You really aren't worried at all. Nannan wasn't even ten, and you had her enter the military academy. After that you even arranged for her to join the fleet. Ten rotations of fighting,[1] each more dangerous than the last. You're truly hard-hearted." Zhao Chen looked helplessly at Chu Xuan beside him.
That was right.
That prodigy fleet captain, the commander not yet ten years old,
was Zhao Chen and Chu Xuan's daughter, Nannan.
"Because she is a Zhao. Her name is Zhao Chuchu." Chu Xuan's expression did not change, as if she did not care at all about how things stood on the battlefield.
But only Zhao Chen knew:
in three rotations of fighting,
Chu Xuan had every time led a fleet herself to lie in wait nearby; the moment Nannan was truly in danger,
she would step in at once and save her.
Zhao Chen looked at one of the monitor feeds.
It was the feed from the bridge where Nannan was.
His and Chu Xuan's access rights both let them see the monitor feed from the bridge of any Fierce Dragon-made interstellar warship.
Watching the girl not yet ten, in a Fierce Dragon military uniform, standing there commanding a battle,
Zhao Chen was worried at heart, and somewhat proud at the same time.
She was every bit Zhao Chen's daughter.
At ten she could command a battle.
She could be said to have inherited the blood of the Chu family's line of generals too.
Old Master Chu ought to be very pleased.
This mantle and bloodline of his could be said to have an heir.
Zhao Chen and Chu Xuan watched the changes on the battlefield closely.
The fleet in Nannan's charge had already begun to move.
On the hulls of starship after starship, combat mechas could be seen coming into view, with rocket launchers fitted to them so they could accelerate toward their landing points.
At the same time the fleet's T4 Fallen-Angel-class Super-Heavy Carrier Starship also launched all of its interstellar fighters.
This carrier starship had been used before, in the Fierce Dragon civilization's campaign against the Savage Beast Alliance.
But because there were not many of them, and that battle had been mainly a raid,
its showing had not been very impressive.
And now, in Nannan's hands, it was showing what it could do.
Fallen-Angel-class Super-Heavy Carrier Starship
Hull type: carrier starship
Tech tier: T4
Hull armor strength: 20,000–26,000 units
Star-shield energy value: 3 million units
Cruising speed: 160 star-knots
Warp engine: tier-8 warp engine
Length: 39.68 kilometers
Mass: 91.88 million tons
Crew posts: 300,000
Ship weapons:
Fallen-Angel S·I-type interstellar fighters: 30,000 may be carried
Fallen-Angel S·II-type heavy interstellar stealth bombers: 3,000 may be carried
Fallen-Angel S·III-type multi-role combat interstellar drones: 300,000 may be carried
Fallen-Angel F·I-type electronic-jamming interstellar stealth drones: 200 may be carried
Fallen-Angel F·II-type interstellar scout craft: 1,000 may be carried
Fallen-Angel F·III-type interstellar stealth scout craft: 100 may be carried
1,000 medium fully automatic high-density point-defense guns
50-unit missile silo (3,000 defense-field-type short-range interception interstellar missiles)
The three hundred thousand interstellar fighters and interstellar drones of every model aboard this T4 Fallen-Angel-class Super-Heavy Carrier Starship all took off.
At the same time,
another T4 interstellar missile ship was also ready for battle.
Hell-Angel-class Heavy Interstellar Missile Ship
Hull type: interstellar missile ship
Tech tier: T4
Hull armor strength: 3,000–3,300 units
Star-shield energy value: 200,000 units
Cruising speed: 200 star-knots
Warp engine: tier-8 warp engine
Length: 3.9 kilometers
Mass: 4.9 million tons
Crew posts: 2,000
Ship weapons:
300,000 Hell-Angel Type-I regular interstellar missiles
50,000 Hell-Angel Type-II medium-range heavy interstellar missiles
20,000 Hell-Angel Type-III ultra-long-range medium interstellar missiles
5,000 Hell-Angel Type-IV medium-to-long-range cluster submunition missiles
1,000 Hell-Angel Type-V ultra-long-range dark-matter high-explosive interstellar missiles
100 Hell-Angel Type-VI black-hole-mimicking special antimatter interstellar missiles
Nannan looked at this interstellar missile ship's data.
Though it was not the first time she had looked at it,
every time she did, she could not help marveling at how amazing her father was.
She had heard her mother say that these interstellar warships had all been developed and built by her father.
Her father was a very, very amazing person.
She had grown up hearing words like these.
Even before she and her father had recognized each other, she had known he was a very powerful man.
After they recognized each other, the admiration in her heart grew all the more.
So she wanted to prove herself too, to prove her ability.
In the future, when she and her father made their identities public,
people would not only say: oh, so that's the Fierce Dragon Emperor's daughter.
They would also say:
no wonder she's the Fierce Dragon Emperor's daughter; only the Fierce Dragon Emperor could father so outstanding a daughter.
"I'm going to grow strong! Every battle is a road to my growing strong!" Nannan said in her heart, unshakably.
"T4 Gorgon-class Heavy Interstellar Heavy-Artillery Ship, fix your attack trajectories. T4 Hell-Angel-class Heavy Interstellar Missile Ship, supplement the fire. Interstellar fighters and interstellar drones, secure the delivery corridor. Combat mecha corps, prepare to begin the drop. Final thirty seconds!" Nannan said in the command channel.
Every department at this moment was at its very sharpest.
These thirty seconds were not simply time to get ready.
For their fleet was still advancing at a steady speed,
and the distance flown in these thirty seconds was exactly the distance to these fleets' entry into the hive-race's alert range.
Nannan had calculated all of this to the utmost,
making sure that every minute and every stretch of distance could be put to the best use.
She had asked her mother
how one could make sure of victory on the battlefield.
She remembered her mother saying:
on the battlefield, no one can make sure of winning one hundred percent.
What an outstanding commander can do is this: what others can do, you must do.
What others can't do, you must do too.
What others can't think of, you must think of all the more.
Only that way can you make sure your fleet has the greatest possible chance of winning.
"Begin the drop!" Nannan gave the order.
An order given at this moment by a girl who looked ten could decide the lives of thousands upon thousands of people.
But not the slightest tremble could be heard in her voice.
Mommy, if because of one order of yours tens of thousands of people, or even more, had to give their lives for it, how would you deal with that?
This was the question she had asked her mother
the first time there were casualties in her fleet.
In the simulations at the academy, those casualty figures were only numbers.
But in real combat, those who died were real, genuine corpses.
Though her fleet had so far had no casualties in its battles,
the fleets fighting alongside hers had.
She had seen with her own eyes the bodies that had been gathered up,
bodies packed in body bags, laid out neatly like cargo in hold after hold.
But she knew they were not cargo.
Before this they had been lives, every one, red-blooded and alive.
In their homes there might also be family members of about her age, waiting for them to come home.
And just because of one order from a commander, these people had to go to their deaths, wave after wave.
Her mother had said then:
the battlefield is a place of blood and fire.
And in the Fierce Dragon fleets, becoming crew here is voluntary for everyone, at least in action.
Even if inside they are afraid,
perhaps for some practical reason they have still turned up on the battlefield and become crew.
At the very start they may be scared, may be afraid.
But once they truly feel the change war brings to them and even to their families,
they won't fear war.
They may even long for war, because war is making wealth for them, and some wars are defending their own wealth for them.
So, so long as the orders you give aren't foolish,
then you must not carry any burden in your heart.
They are all fighting for their lives for the things they hold to.
That time, her mother had told her a great many things.
She had even taken her to the cemetery afterward, and to the homes of soldiers who had fallen,
to let her truly feel what that was like.
From then on, she was no longer indecisive.
She knew that for an order of hers, people would pay with their lives.
But what she had to do was make that order perfect, without the slightest flaw.
Only that way could the deaths of those who gave their lives for it be worth more,
and so let fewer people die.
The adjutant beside her looked at the fleet captain's resolute expression and admired her deeply.
What had she herself been doing at this age?
Probably still babbling ababa over video games.
And this girl was already commanding three hundred interstellar warships and tens of thousands of people fighting the hive-race here.
Truly, comparing yourself with others will drive you mad.
"Mecha corps, begin the drop."
Combat mecha after combat mecha was flung out, falling like meteorites toward that hive-race planet.
At the same time,
the T4 Gorgon-class Heavy Interstellar Heavy-Artillery Ship and the T2 interstellar heavy-artillery ships opened fire one after another.
Those attacks formed terrifying nets of fire all around, clearing away every hive-race unit within this area.
But right in the middle of this net of fire, there seemed to be something like the eye of a storm.
And this eye of the storm was the flight path of those combat mechas.
However dangerous it was outside, within this path these combat mechas were very safe.
Of course, this was not one hundred percent safe either.
Now and then some danger still came up.
And at such times, the interstellar missiles of the T4 Hell-Angel-class Heavy Interstellar Missile Ship would fill these gaps.
"Holy cow, in earlier battles it was never this safe," a combat mecha pilot flying at high speed sighed, looking at the lovely view outside.
"Don't celebrate too soon. Once we land in a bit, we'll have our hands full," another combat mecha pilot said nervously.
Very soon these combat mechas had entered the planet's low orbit, about to pass through the atmosphere.
And by this point,
more than half of the interstellar heavy guns' attacks had been used up, and quite a few had been intercepted by defensive weapons of every kind.
And on the ground, some scorpion-like hive-race combat units woke up.
Their huge stinger-like cannons rose and took aim at the sky.
They were the anti-air units evolved on this hive-race planet.
The energy shots fired from those stingers could reach a very long way.
They belonged to this planet's air-defense network!
These scorpions began locking onto those objects falling at high speed from the sky like meteorites.
Just as they were about to fire,
interstellar missile after interstellar missile struck the ground.
Boom, boom, boom!
Fireballs of explosion covered a very large area.
And at the same time, swarms of interstellar drones dove at the hive-race combat units flying up from the ground.
The two sides broke out in extremely fierce fighting in the air,
as if two utterly different swarms of locusts were crashing together in the sky!
Boom, boom, boom.
Great crash after great crash came from the ground too.
T4 Thunder-Warrior-class Medium Interstellar Combat Mecha after Thunder-Warrior landed, raising great clouds of dust.
Though before landing the rockets fired in reverse, cutting ninety percent of the force of the fall,
otherwise, for these big fellows, landing at that speed would have smashed great craters in the ground, and the mechas themselves would most likely have suffered every kind of fault.
"Quick, quick, quick! Set up the battle position. Go get the weapon crates!" The mecha corps commander opened the command channel at once on landing.
He looked at the beacons of every combat mecha, all still lit, and let out a breath of relief.
At least during the descent there had been no needless losses.
Landing along with these combat mechas were big objects like shipping containers, one after another.
But what was inside them was no simple cargo.
It was weaponry and equipment Chief Engineer Annie had developed in her spare time specially for these combat mechas' ground fighting.
A mecha soldier rushed up beside one of the containers,
shouting at the same time, "Clear this area, quick!"
The few bugs left in this area at once began to be cleared away.
Meanwhile the container slowly unfolded.
Then a simple fortress appeared plainly before everyone,
something like a small blockhouse,
square and boxy.
In the corners atop its walls were fitted machine guns, autocannons, flamethrowers and weapons of every type.
Most important of all, inside it a great deal of weaponry and equipment was stored.
This gave these combat mechas the ability to fight on and on!