212: Chapter 212 Phoenix-shaped cannons, 100,000 tons of fangs!

sentry ship arrival countdown, day 74.

Pangu Laboratory, B2 Level, morning.

Liu Huaqiang closed his notebook on the communications side and walked over.

"I have confirmed the software package burning for the Xuannv with Zhou Dehai. Both Zhulong units are running at full capacity, and we've completed over half the progress. Mass production won't be an issue."

Su Che stared at the overall structural cross-section of the luan bird on the main screen.

He had been looking at this diagram for twenty minutes.

The Xuannv is a single aircraft with one weapons bay in the fuselage and four engines; its overall architecture is clear, and the fire control adaptation has a logical path to follow.

The luan bird is different.

With a 100,000-ton hull, the power compartments, energy compartments, command and control compartments, living quarters, and hangar compartments are distributed throughout the entire ship.

Deciding how many directed-energy weapon emplacements to install, where to place them, how to interface them with the ship-based command and control system, and how to link them with the Quantum Radar's global detection data—each of these items alone is several times the workload of the Xuannv.

"Academician Li."

On the weapons adaptation side, Academician Li Zhengyang put down his cup.

"What do you think about the luan bird's emplacement layout?"

Academician Li Zhengyang walked over and stood to the side of the main screen.

"Ship-based directed-energy cannons don't follow the same logic as airborne ones. The Xuannv only has one weapons bay per aircraft, the cannon barrel direction aligns with the nose, and turning relies on flight control. The luan bird is a fixed platform; the cannons themselves must be able to cover all directions. Otherwise, the luan bird would have to turn to fire, which would make it a target."

"Omnidirectional coverage."

Su Che marked a few points on the cross-section diagram. "Six on the upper deck, two on the bow, two on the stern, three on each side, and four reserve emplacements in the belly. Sixteen main cannons will form omnidirectional coverage with no blind spots."

"Power requirements for firing all sixteen simultaneously."

Academician Sun Qiwen had appeared beside them at some point, clutching his enamel mug in a different position.

Su Che multiplied the peak power consumption of a single ultimate-version directed-energy weapon by sixteen, adding the base power for the swarm control, shield maintenance, and engine operation running simultaneously.

When the number appeared, Academician Sun Qiwen took a look.

"The high-order fusion reactor's output can handle it, but the instantaneous pulse of a sixteen-cannon volley will shock the main power bus. I need to add independent superconducting energy storage buffer rings to the branch line of each cannon to absorb the pulse spikes in a staggered manner."

"What is the charge-discharge cycle lifespan of the buffer rings?"

"One hundred thousand cycles; that's enough for a long time."

Academician Li Zhengyang zoomed in on the cross-section to look at the emplacement markings.

"The four reserve emplacements in the belly have their firing angles blocked by the hull. How do we solve that?"

"Retractable cannon barrels."

Su Che dragged the mouse to those four marked points on the belly. "They are retracted into the hull in their normal state and pop out when firing. The cannon barrel deployment angle covers the lower hemisphere."

"Will the retractable mechanism jam under the temperature fluctuations of deep space?"

Academician Zhang Weide called out from the supercomputing terminal, "Build in structural thermal compensation. It's the same concept as the radiator fins—using bimetallic elastic adaptation to keep the retraction precision unchanged within a range of -200 to +300 degrees."

Academician Li Zhengyang wrote a line in his notebook and then looked up.

"There is one more question. The Xuannv's navigation particle cluster uses a hundred-cluster chain relay, and that's in an airborne firing chamber less than thirty centimeters long. The ship-based cannon's firing chamber is at least three meters. Is a hundred clusters still enough?"

Su Che recalculated the ratio of the navigation particle clusters.

"Scaling proportionally with the firing chamber length, a three-meter chamber will hold two hundred and eighty clusters. The equivalent coherence time increases from thirty-six seconds to just over one hundred seconds, suppressing the pointing drift at a distance of thirty million kilometers to the femtometer level."

"Femtometer level."

Academician Li Zhengyang wrote down this unit in his notebook and paused. "That's even more stable than hitting a fixed target."

Academician Qian Zhenhua walked over from the east workstation, holding a piece of scratch paper.

"The Quantum Radar array on the luan bird is different from the Xuannv's airborne version. The ship-based array covers an area one order of magnitude larger, and the scanned data volume is even greater."

He continued, "The ship-based fire control network needs to process target allocation for sixteen cannons in real-time, plus the coordination of three hundred Xuannv swarms, twelve White Emperors, and six Mingdi Interceptors. If we cram all that into one fire control scheduling system, is the Deep Space Main God AI's computing power sufficient?"

"The Sub-nanometer chip array at Kaitian Base is specially configured for the luan bird's computing core, not the distributed airborne unit used by the Xuannv."

Zhao Mingyuan sat up from the corner. "The computing power of the entire ship is several orders of magnitude higher than a single Xuannv. This is not the bottleneck."

Academician Qian Zhenhua placed the scratch paper in front of Su Che.

"Communications is the bottleneck. The luan bird is simultaneously coordinating three hundred Xuannv, twelve White Emperors, and six Mingdi Interceptors, plus its own sixteen cannons. Since all target allocation and command distribution go through the same Quantum Communication network, the channel bandwidth needs to be recalculated."

Su Che took the scratch paper and scanned it.

"You've already calculated it."

"I have. The conclusion is that with the existing channel bandwidth, occupancy will reach eighty-eight percent under full-load combat conditions, leaving only twelve percent for sudden emergency commands."

"Add a top-priority emergency channel specifically for the luan bird's first-level tactical commands to the three hundred Xuannv. Normal scheduling will go through the existing network, while emergency overrides will use the independent channel; they won't interfere with each other."

Academician Qian Zhenhua folded the scratch paper and returned to his workstation.

...

In the afternoon, the adaptation entered the detailed advancement phase.

Wen Bo came in with a new stealth film sample and walked straight to the test bench.

"The luan bird's cannon muzzles cover all directions, which means the barrels must extend past the stealth layer when firing. On the Xuannv, the barrels are inside the weapons bay, and the stealth switches to enhanced mode when the bay doors open."

"Since the luan bird's barrels extend from the hull sidewall, we must ensure the barrels themselves also have a stealth coating."

"The barrels will overheat."

Academician Li Zhengyang walked over. "When directed-energy is fired, the outer wall temperature of the barrel will reach several hundred degrees, which would burn off ordinary stealth coatings."

Wen Bo flipped the sample over.

"This is a high-temperature adaptive stealth coating. A layer of ceramic phase-change particles is mixed into the carbon nanotube substrate. The stealth performance remains unchanged up to 200 degrees. Once it exceeds 200 degrees, the phase-change particles activate to compensate for the refractive index shift caused by high temperatures. The effective upper limit is 800 degrees."

"Firing muzzle temperature."

"Maximum 600 degrees."

"That's enough."

Wen Bo put the sample down and turned to walk out.

"Zhou Dehai has already scheduled production; the barrel coating and the hull stealth layer will be delivered in the same batch."

Academician Sun Qiwen emerged from the U-shaped array area and set his enamel mug on a cabinet.

"The plan for the sixteen superconducting energy storage buffer rings is ready. They will be connected in series with the power supply branch of each cannon, without changing the architecture of the main power bus."

"But there is one condition: the power cables for the four retractable cannon barrels in the belly must pass through movable joints. Superconducting flexible cables must be used at the joints, otherwise the cables will break from the stress during retraction and extension."

Liu Huaqiang wrote "Superconducting flexible cables, specific for cannon barrel joint sections" in his notebook and glanced at Su Che.

"Do we have any in current stock?"

Su Che shook his head. "No, flexible superconducting cables are an existing technology; have the industrial sector procure them."

Liu Huaqiang crossed out the previous line and rewrote it on the side: "Flexible superconducting cables, industrial procurement, top priority."

...

sentry ship arrival countdown, day 73.

B2 Level, morning.

Su Che spent nearly a day writing the core code for the ship-based fire control scheduling framework.

It was more complex than the Xuannv's, not because the algorithm was harder, but because the luan bird has multiple firepower units with fixed emplacements but controllable directions—completely different kinematic constraints compared to the mobile Xuannv.

He specifically added a "Fixed Platform Emplacement Geometric Constraint Layer" to the framework.

It calculates the effective firing field of each cannon in real-time under different ship attitudes, ensuring that when any target enters the firing field of a cannon, the fire control network prioritizes the one with the optimal angle without relying on the ship's turning.

Combining this with Zhao Mingyuan's swarm formation commands and Academician Qian Zhenhua's emergency channel protocol, he merged everything into the Deep Space Main God AI's ship-level fire control master module.

They ran two rounds of joint debugging.

In the first round, sixteen cannons locked onto sixteen targets in different directions simultaneously, and the swarm launched three hundred units simultaneously; there were no allocation conflicts.

In the second round, they simulated the ship making a sharp turn under high-mobility conditions, and the emplacement geometric constraint layer recalculated the firing fields in real-time.

Targets that were originally within the effective firing field partially moved into blind spots after the turn, and the fire control network automatically transferred the targets in the blind spots to the swarm for engagement.

Handover time: 0.01 seconds.

Academician Sun Qiwen looked at the power consumption curve; the peaks of the sixteen-cannon staggered firing were smoothed out by the superconducting energy storage buffer rings, and the curve looked even better than Su Che had expected.

"There are no issues with thermodynamics. The buffer rings are eleven percent more effective than theoretically expected, and the pulse shock to the main power bus is almost imperceptible."

Academician Li Zhengyang read the second round of joint debugging logs from beginning to end and did not raise any new questions.

"The ship-based version of the fire control logic is finalized."

Su Che packaged the complete ship-based fire control technical package, labeled it "luan bird 100,000-Ton Class - Ship-Based Fire Control System Final Draft," and pushed it into the encrypted vault.

Liu Huaqiang walked to the front of the main screen and wrote two words on the last line of his notebook: luan bird.

This time he didn't pause and drew a complete checkmark.

"So, that's it?"

Zhao Mingyuan leaned back in his chair with his legs crossed.

"The software side is done; the rest is up to the national manufacturing sector."

Su Che stood up. "The manufacturing and installation of the sixteen cannon bodies, the superconducting energy storage buffer rings, the high-temperature stealth coating for the barrels, and the flexible superconducting cables will all go through Dean Liu's industrial chain."

Liu Huaqiang closed his notebook. "I will hold an industrial coordination meeting this afternoon to align production scheduling with Zhou Dehai and Lieutenant General Peng."

Su Che closed the luan bird's hull cross-section from the main screen.

Only the real-time feed of the Near-Earth Orbit Base remained on the screen.

The luan bird's massive hull hung quietly in the Near-Earth Orbit Base's Dry Dock. The installation ports for the two reserved emplacements on the bow were still empty, and the rail slots for the retractable cannon barrels in the belly hadn't been finished, looking just like a bird that hadn't yet grown its claws.

"The luan bird configuration should be finalized too."

Su Che pulled up the master list of ship-based combat units on the side display screen of the main console.

Liu Huaqiang opened a new page in his notebook.

"Three hundred Xuannv, twelve White Emperors, six Mingdi Interceptors, ninety-six Mecha."

Su Che went over the numbers. "The Xuannv has a wingspan of twenty-five meters. The hangar adopts a multi-layer 3D hangar design. When stowed, the wings fold, and the vast majority are sealed in storage-style compartments inside the hull, not taking up external deck space."

"The ninety-six Mecha are small in volume; they are modularly distributed to each hangar level and can exit the ship through corresponding hatches at any time."

Liu Huaqiang wrote these numbers down line by line without speaking.

Zhao Mingyuan looked down at the combat unit master list. "Three hundred Xuannv—taking the mass production cycle into account, is that enough?"

"With both Zhulong units running at full capacity, it's absolutely no problem."

Su Che closed the master list.

The B2 Level was quiet for a while.

Academician Sun Qiwen walked toward the U-shaped array area with his enamel mug and stopped at the corner.

"Su Che, the White Emperor."

Su Che scanned the countdown board in his consciousness.

The full development of the White Emperor hadn't started yet.

The White Emperor is a dual-mode manned/unmanned aerospace fighter, the only one in the entire system that requires a human to sit inside and fly it, with a completely different control logic from the Xuannv.

Su Che closed all the document windows for the luan bird's ship-based fire control system, clearing the main screen; it was empty.

In his mind, the blue-white panel popped up quietly.

[Ding! Detected that the Xuannv series is fully finalized, the swarm system development is complete, and the luan bird ship-based fire control system adaptation is complete! Main development task triggered!]

[Task Name: Let the pilot's brain fly the plane directly!]

[Task Content: The Xuannv is a mechanical brain flying itself; the White Emperor is different!]

[The White Emperor is the Dragon Kingdom's first dual-mode manned/unmanned aerospace fighter. The pilot sits inside and controls it with their consciousness, directly commanding the swarm formation with their brain!]

[But the current Brain-Computer Interface is still in its primary version. The nerve signal decoding precision is insufficient, and the human-machine collaboration response cannot keep up with the rhythm of deep space combat!]

[Please comprehensively upgrade the Brain-Computer Interface bidirectional interaction system to achieve high-precision nerve signal decoding, consciousness command encoding and transmission, and bidirectional brain-wave-to-digital signal conversion.]

[Let every thought of the pilot instantly become an action of the White Emperor!]

[Task Reward: 650,000 skill points, unlock exchange permissions for high-precision nerve signal decoding technology, consciousness command encoding and transmission technology, and bidirectional brain-wave-to-digital signal conversion technology; requires 340,000 exchange points.]

[Current host skill point balance is sufficient. Do you wish to exchange?]

Su Che hung the panel in the corner of his consciousness and didn't move immediately.

On the main screen, in the real-time feed of the luan bird.

The Dry Dock's engineering robotic arms were performing the final round of compartment docking inspections, and the lights shone on the empty emplacement installation ports.

Seventy-three days.

The White Emperor could not wait.