The Jade Dragon cruised silently through low Earth orbit, roughly 400 kilometers above the planet's surface.
As an old-style Auspicious Cloud-class inner defense perimeter vessel platform, the Jade Dragon had been operating in low Earth orbit for thirty years since entering service. It had also fired its main guns at ground targets many times, and its overall structural condition could hardly be called excellent. Even in power-saving mode without braking, with only the life-support and observation systems running, a considerable amount of mechanical noise still permeated the ship. Turn on a few more modules, and "leaning against the wall feels like lying on a massage bed" was no exaggeration.
At that moment, when the ship's executive officer, Claire, gripped a handhold on the bulkhead, it felt as though he were holding a massage wand. Still, relying on ten years of hands-on Aerospace Force experience, he skillfully used the handhold to push off just once, floating lightly across the nearly twenty-meter-long passageway.
He could have factored in the opening time of the automatic sensor door, but the command compartment's entrance was an antique that required a manually entered password. Nothing he could do about that...
Even with the time spent opening the password door, he entered the so-called "bridge" without a hitch. This was the most spacious area on the entire vessel, nearly two stories high, with an excellent open interior structure. Fixed stations spiraled along the inner walls, while the open space was put to proper use by an integrated projected tactical sand table that could only be called luxurious.
In Claire's opinion, it was the most eye-catching design among antiques of this kind. No wonder the officers and soldiers, nearly all suffering from mild, moderate, or severe claustrophobia, did everything they could to secure command-compartment duty shifts, avoiding the