Skyborne Aircraft Carrier and Mecha War God

The strategic deterrence of an aerospace carrier, plus the brutal aesthetics of a mecha war god

Synopsis:

In 2157, the Earth Federation launches the Starlink Initiative, ostensibly to build an aerospace defense network, but in reality to monopolize resources. Wang Tianlong, commander of the Tianlong unit in the Federation’s Seventh Aerospace Fleet, is framed as a traitor after refusing an order to massacre civilians. His unit is disbanded, and he is exiled to serve as a guard at a “junkyard” on the far side of the moon.

Ten years later, a financial crisis hits the Federation, and its demolition office comes knocking on the far side of the moon. Zhao Wuji, son of a powerful Federation family and now deputy captain of the aerospace carrier Blazing Sun, offers just “eight hundred tons of low-grade helium-3” in compensation as he tries to forcibly demolish the veterans’ settlement Wang Tianlong protects. He sneers, “The lives of you old soldiers aren’t even worth the cost of calibrating one laser cannon on my carrier.”

Watching disabled veterans who once fought for their country being driven out, and seeing his comrades’ gravestones toppled, Wang Tianlong laughs. He tears open his tattered uniform, revealing an old wound on his chest, deep enough to expose the bone. He got it saving Zhao Wuji’s father all those years ago.

“Who says fate is written in the stars? I conquered the heavens once, and today I can tear your carrier apart!”

That night, the far side of the moon goes radar-blind. A ragtag army of retired veterans, clad in smart exoskeletons and operating mothballed stealth weapons, launches a surprise attack on the Federation’s most advanced aerospace carrier fleet in mecha war gods whose serial numbers have long since been struck from the registry. Wang Tianlong stands aboard an antique aerospace carrier, its hull rusted all over, with a fleet of starships blotting out the sky behind him