The Jade Dragon's main gun was not actually a gun at all.
The Auspicious Cloud-class inner defense perimeter vessel platform it belonged to was known as a space-based weapons platform. But constrained by the conditions of its era, it had only been fitted with two types of weapons based on its two primary functions.
One was an electromagnetic orbital cannon designed to lock onto troublesome Aberrant Species cruising through the upper-middle atmosphere—targets that were both high-altitude and high-speed—and pick them off. Its single-target kill efficiency was astonishing. Everyone was accustomed to calling it the "secondary gun."
The other was a weapon of mass destruction specifically designed for Aberration Nests in the Wilderness, as well as the exceptionally few Aberrant Species individuals powerful beyond imagination. That was the so-called "main gun." Strictly speaking, the "main gun charging" mentioned by the sergeant was merely charging the launch rack.
As the military's strategic posture toward the Wilderness gradually shifted from "defense" to "counteroffensive," gaining the initiative, new weapons of war emerged one after another. Auspicious Cloud-class platforms had basically withdrawn from the front lines. Nowadays, they only did a little research, shot down some birds, and helped clear high-altitude flight corridors. They no longer carried out ground-strike missions. Still, it remained in a state of combat readiness. Its ammunition load had been halved, but it still carried one round of main-gun "ammunition."
Claire was not worried about anything else. He was worried that these deadbeat soldiers aboard, whose sense of responsibility had hit rock bottom after going so long without combat missions, might make an operational mistake and fling the deadly thing in the ammunition bay out into space. It would not explode—without ground authorization, it was just a lump of metal—but if they really made it skip across the atmosphere, they would