"Can these be new starship technologies?" Nana and the Spider Queen Iris came darting over like hounds that have caught the smell of meat.
The two opened the data discs and called up the brief materials within.
And with them the holographic images of three interstellar warships.
"This… a T5 Diamond-Eden-class Starship?" Annie, who had turned to stone, marked that Eden-series warship.
At which her feelings recovered a good deal.
She came forward of her own accord and looked closely through this T5 Diamond-Eden's several sets of data; and as she looked, the drool ran from the corner of her mouth.
As though what she looked at were no interstellar warship, but some delicious dish.
For the more advanced an Eden-series starship, the finer the food materials it raises!
"The T5 Frost-Tyrant-class Heavy Interstellar Missile Battlecruiser… this missile ship's settings are much like that earlier T4 Tyrant's. By the look of it they should belong to one series of battlecruiser." The Spider Queen Iris saw the battlecruiser first.
Upon a bare glance at some of the data she saw that this T5 Frost-Tyrant and the earlier T4 Tyrant belong to one family series of warship.
And at this time Annie and the Spider Queen Iris both marked something.
That Nana, looking over the warship before her eyes, had not made a sound.
Which was most unusual.
Of the three chief engineers, it is Nana who is most ardent in the study of technology — above all technology never seen before, which she will every time share with them in great excitement.
But now Nana was as quiet as though she had turned to stone.
"Nana, how is that warship of yours?" Annie inquired in her curiosity.
And at this Nana could not help looking at Commander Zhao Chen with eyes like torches, and asking, "Commander, can this warship truly be mass-produced?"
Zhao Chen had looked over the technical materials of these warships before, and of course knew why Nana would ask such a question.
"Of course. This is a mass-production class. Only that the build cost is rather high, and it wants a great quantity of scarce raw materials. If all that can be settled, then any number whatever may be built. It is not like the T5 Dragon Emperor and the Hades," Zhao Chen explained.
Hearing what the Commander said, the look in Nana's eyes grew more fervent still.
"Nana, what in the world have you seen?" Annie asked in curiosity.
Nana drew a deep breath, ordered her own feelings, then called up one of the sub-pages of the material and pointed at the information upon it. "Look at this item."
Annie and the Spider Queen Iris looked closely.
This warship is named the T5 Crimson-Reaper-class Heavy Interstellar Strategic Missile Ship.
At an interstellar missile ship the two chief engineers took no surprise; for as all men know, their Owl Dragon's Commander dearly loves a missile ship.
And a missile ship's character is nothing but that it carries a great quantity of missiles and can give high firepower support upon a field for a short time.
Then what was different about this one?
Looking, Annie and the Spider Queen Iris did indeed find something not as it should be.
It was a piece of weapon equipment fitted upon this missile ship.
The Crimson Ballista
This weapon can fire an energy shell called the Crimson Ball-Lightning Shell.
The name tells it: this makes use of an early piece of technology, ball lightning.
Though no few interstellar scientists within the universe have studied ball lightning, to this day the rate of its use is exceedingly low; in the main it exists only within laboratories.
But this weapon system fitted upon this missile ship means that it can use ball lightning, and make a weapon of it.
"What is the matter with them?" Charlotte came over at this point, holding in both hands a skewer of grilled squid — a very particular breed of squid, which upon the skewer stood a full man's height.
By the ordinary way of eating it, one would cut it up.
But Charlotte likes to eat it whole.
"Within the new missile ship there is a weapon called the Crimson Ballista, which can fire a Crimson Ball-Lightning Shell," Zhao Chen explained.
"We have a new missile ship?" The wolf-girl Baixue appeared of a sudden behind Zhao Chen as though by a jump, her tail swaying without cease.
Zhao Chen was somewhat surprised; if he remembered rightly, she had been a hundred meters off a moment ago.
Were her ears as sharp as that?
"Though what is this Crimson Ball-Lightning Shell? Do missile ships not all fire interstellar missiles?" The wolf-girl Baixue looked at Zhao Chen in puzzlement.
Zhao Chen raised a hand, and a holographic picture began to appear before him. "This T5 Crimson-Reaper-class Heavy Interstellar Strategic Missile Ship is indeed fitted with a great quantity of interstellar missiles.
"Only that besides them it is expressly fitted with this one weapon.
"And the use of this Crimson Ball-Lightning Shell is this.
"Fired out, it is released within the target district, and can wreck the star-shield energy structure of the starships about it.
"And it cannot be intercepted, and cannot be evaded — until the energy the Crimson Ball-Lightning Shell releases is canceled out against the star-shield energy, it does not end."
Within the holographic image Zhao Chen had simply made, there was the model of a vast interstellar fleet.
And at a distance a T5 Crimson-Reaper; and of a sudden this missile ship's Crimson Ballista fired.
A blue ball of lightning shot at exceeding speed toward the enemy fleets.
At the last, having reached a certain position, it began to swell, its bulk increasing many times over.
One could see the crimson ball lightning begin to cover fleet after fleet — but this crimson ball lightning worked no effect whatever upon those warships' hulls.
Rather, the star-shields about the ships began by degrees to vanish.
Ten hulls, a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand…
Until the energy of this crimson ball lightning was spent, when it ceased to swell, and then dispersed in the turn of an eye, as though nothing whatever had happened.
Leaving only that sheet of interstellar warships without star-shields!
The wolf-girl Baixue was blank a moment, and then cried out, "Then before my missile ships attack, we may give them one of these, and wreck the enemy ships' star-shields outright!"
Understand that when a missile ship attacks, it must as often as not first throw in a great batch of missiles to spend the enemy's star-shields before it can threaten the enemy at all.
For which certain missiles against star-shields had been made ready expressly besides.
But plainly none of them is so direct as this Crimson Ball-Lightning Shell — and the chief point of all is that it cannot be intercepted!
"This function is somewhat like the Hades' Hades Field, only that this is against star-shields alone," Charlotte analyzed from beside them.
"Its advantage lies in this: that it can be mass-produced and built upon a large scale. Whereas of the Hades there is but one," Zhao Chen said, with his face set.
Think of it: upon a field, to give an enemy fleet several of these, and take their star-shields off first — what would the enemy commander feel then?