"So, you've already mastered a systematic body of spaceflight technology." Lin Cuo looked at the copy of the contract on the table and only raised his head after a long while. "And you used all of it to pack a bunch of people who aren't even full citizens into a tin can and throw them behind enemy lines?"
Leila's expression was icy. "Now you understand why I called it an iron coffin."
"It's not that I don't understand." Lin Cuo's gaze shifted from her face to the structural diagram in Anna's hands. "I can't comprehend it. You already have one foot outside the atmosphere, yet you never thought to build a satellite first, conduct unmanned return tests first, or provide the pilots with reliable escape and search-and-rescue systems first. The very first thing you considered was how to send people farther away, so they could die somewhere a committee couldn't see."
Anna heard the contempt in his voice and immediately frowned. "Your Excellency, the Regent, the real problem is that the committee believes that, since W-0's pilots can endure it, there's no need to add expensive recovery systems for them."
"So you still couldn't bear to spend the money on them."
"Correct."
Anna answered without hesitation, but Lin Cuo's anger won no sympathy from Leila. She stared at the far-too-young face on the other end of the screen, her voice steadily deepening. "And how are you any better than them? Didn't Great Han buy Apollo's Chariot because it could deliver machines and pilots to any battlefield?"
Lin Cuo stared at her through the screen for several seconds.
"Do both of you think I bought this thing just to keep stuffing people inside and sending them to their deaths?"
"You just ordered the military police to forcibly detain my subordinates," Leila