After the meeting, accompanied by Rozes, Annie... and an ever-present backseat spirit that only he could see, Yu Lian headed straight to Dock Four at Gibraltar Fortress.
Its main function was to serve as a fleet carrier base and repair platform. Naturally, in addition to its enormous flight deck, it also had dedicated maintenance and outfitting departments for small attack units such as assault landers, sublight interceptors, and orbital bombers. It even had the factories to produce various supplies in-house, including small shields and energy weapons.
Now, the flight deck of Dock Four was packed with spindle-shaped small craft. Each was about one and a half times the size of a standard assault lander, and there were more than two hundred of them.
One ship, hull number NDL0001, was painted silver-gray. A crowned skull adorned the side with its hull number, while the other side bore a spiral-galaxy kill marking. That was far rarer than the five- or ten-star markings of an ace pilot. It meant the little ship had killed a space leviathan whose presence would bring about a "natural disaster" on a system-wide scale.
Needless to say, the craft before him were none other than New Shenzhou One and its "descendants."
The flight deck was a hive of activity, bustling like a gigantic construction site.
Engineers, mechanics, and pilots scrambled all over their ships. Semi-automated equipment operated by people, as well as unmanned engineering drones, hurried nonstop through the passageways between the craft, emitting shrill alerts.
Yu Lian soon spotted a huge, sweating fat man in the crowd. Dust covered his face so thickly that it was hard to make out his complexion. His heavy work clothes were stained and scorched by fire and electricity, making him look as though he had just crawled out of a blaze.