Keep Throwing Ding Dang Balls

The ships roared through a passageway so broad it was absurd. Beyond the portholes, bizarre alloy walls blurred past at high speed. We had been advancing through the starship for over ten minutes, with the Pandora sisters acting as our vanguard not far ahead. The two little girls clearly hadn't found those dumb anti-aircraft guns satisfying enough to shoot up earlier, and were now eagerly hoping that eight or ten million Terminators would show up in front of them. I didn't understand why two soft, adorable lolis had such an interest in tearing things apart, just as I didn't understand why there wasn't a single enemy in this passage.

This was the third branch corridor after entering the passage. The surrounding space had become much narrower than at the beginning, yet it was still nearly five hundred meters wide. Towering alloy walls stood on either side of us, covered in countless faintly glowing racks. Mounted on those racks were single-pilot fighters and assault ships, though there was no telling whether they still worked. Their state was like they were about to enter battle: every fighter was positioned for launch, half their engine seals were already open, and every assault ship had its restraint locks released. I could imagine that if a shrill air-defense alarm rang through this passage, the dense mass of killing machines around us would peel away from the walls like swarms of bees, filling the surrounding space before rushing into the void thousands of kilometers away. That image gave our mere dozen or so small ships a powerful thrill—but in reality, though every craft here remained in its final pre-launch state, not a single one had deployed. The launch rack occupancy rate was ninety-eight percent. Almost every rack held a fighter or assault ship poised to launch.