Although the Scarlet Throne wasn't a dedicated large carrier, it still had a huge hangar—big enough to fit an entire game of celestial ball.
Now, the hangar, which had stood empty for a long time, was packed with three multirole fighter squadrons and one sublight interceptor squadron, nearly four hundred pilots, six assault landers, and more than two thousand stormtroopers, along with an entire regiment of maintenance technicians.
"All fighter power packs checked! Weapons systems checked! Engines are in good condition!"
"Rogue Squadron's lightwing systems checked!"
"Double-check their antimatter torpedoes. Once they've been dropped, return to the ship immediately and switch to Type A equipment."
"All pilots, prepare to board! All pilots, prepare to board! Repeat, all pilots, prepare to board!"
"Stormtroopers, take your positions! Stormtroopers, take your positions! Stormtroopers, take your positions! We'll begin boarding in ten minutes! Repeat, we'll begin boarding in ten minutes!"
Amid the noisy but perfectly orderly din, pilots in sealed flight suits and stormtroopers already equipped with hussar armor jogged along the passageways beside the fighters.
With his far keener-than-normal eyesight, Yu Lian looked through the crowd and across the hangar. He spotted Li Baolu and Martha Daken, along with several pilots wearing the same armbands, huddled in a relatively quiet corner and taking notes while watching an optical projection. Colonel James Dutt, the flight director, was teaching them. He was wearing a flight suit, too.
The fighters beside them looked nothing like the Ghost fighters that made up the vast majority of the hangar. Their triangular fuselages were fitted with two extra panels resembling solar sails. These were the X21 White Devil fighters, still undergoing trials—the first high-speed fighters in the universe equipped with lightwing attachments.
Still, their shape always reminded Yu Lian of TIE fighters.
...Well, somehow he'd ended up as the