Yu Lian was wondering how to find an excuse to send the girl off to polish and wax the external armor when Dr. Xie said, "The biggest problem right now is indeed the materials."
He added, "The ship is far too badly damaged. To repair it completely, we'd have to send it to a professional dock for a major overhaul. In our current condition, we can manage at most three or four more jumps, and that's assuming the gravity wells are stable. The crystal plates in the jump drive are damaged, and there's a leak in the power conduits. They'll have to be replaced. But all of that requires specialized materials. The biggest headache is the gaping hole in the ship's central section. Every compartment from D12 to E8 has been destroyed, and many of the breaches show no signs of having been burned or melted. It's more as if they were simply disintegrated. I've never heard of a weapon that could do this, unless it was in a laboratory..."
Before being kidnapped by the marauders, Dr. Xie had been a ship designer at the Empire's Hand of Glory Design Bureau. He was naturally no stranger to weapons, either.
"I heard from your people that it was blown open by a torpedo?"
"Yes. It used antimatter explosives." Yu Lian didn't hide it from him.
"So antimatter technology can finally be used in actual combat!" Dr. Xie exclaimed, a trace of pride flashing across his face. Then he said, "The damage to that section of the hull is almost structural. It's a struggle just to keep it intact. I can temporarily secure it with reinforced alloy cables, but that's only a stopgap measure."
"Could we try detaching that section of the hull? Marauder warships have that feature, and this ship looks