Middle Heaven

Middle Heaven is the Eastern Alliance's mobile war-planet and flagship bastion, created by rebuilding An Lun around its molinite core. Named for its commander, Lan Qing, it becomes the command center and strongest conventional weapon of humanity's final campaign against the alien home worlds.

History

An Lun becomes a bastion

Middle Heaven is revealed when Lan Qing brings the transformed An Lun into the joint human armada. Although called a bastion ship, it remains a planet whose molinite core stores immense energy. The East secretly spends years turning that natural reserve into the largest bastion in human history, compensating for its earlier military weakness with a single platform designed for command, defense, and overwhelming firepower. Lan Qing commands it as both Eastern admiral and the Paragon whose title inspired its name. (Chapters 732–736)

Flagship of the counteroffensive

The war-planet joins seven other bastions and twelve fleets in the first counteroffensive. Its size makes it slower and less graceful than smaller bastions, but it houses the Eastern command center, launches Star Division's transports, and anchors the allied formation. After the campaign regroups, Lan Qing preserves Middle Heaven as the East's last strategic reserve while using a transference array aboard it to move resources and fighters between the fleet and Angel. It then leads Tyrannosaurus and Poseidon in a defensive formation with their supporting fleets protected between them. (Chapters 734–742, 812–820)

The war-planet unleashed

When the aliens concentrate on destroying the human command center, Middle Heaven reveals successive layers of its design. It launches Bloodiron Khan drones, powers through the enemy line under concentrated cannon fire, and transforms its surface into kilometers-long energy blades before spinning through the alien horde. During the final advance, Lan Qing partly evacuates the crew and treats the bastion itself as a possible sacrificial weapon. He personally channels his Paragon power through its guns to fire Terminal Ray, then continues the assault after the weapon drains most of the ship's reserves. The planned self-destruction is never carried out, and Middle Heaven remains intact through the recorded campaign. (Chapters 824–831, 844–848, 853)

Abilities and properties

• Middle Heaven is built around An Lun's molinite core, whose enormous stored energy supports sustained weapons fire and systems that smaller bastions could not power. The reserve is vast, but individual ultimate attacks can still nearly exhaust it. (Chapters 735, 831, 846)
• Its honeycomb cannon arrays can fire independently across a broad surface or combine their output into focused attacks. (Chapters 825, 829, 845)
• Large Bloodiron Khan drones carry four laser cannons apiece and can recharge aboard the bastion. Their laser-only loadout offers concentrated fire but requires periodic returns for energy. (Chapters 825–826, 829)
• In close combat, the bastion can project three-kilometer energy blades over its surface and rotate as a planet-sized cutting weapon. This tactic consumes far more energy than ordinary ranged combat. (Chapter 831)
• Terminal Ray compresses and combines fire from part of the forward battery into a single lethal beam. One use consumes nearly all stored power and violently shakes the ship, making repeated immediate fire impractical. (Chapters 845–846)
• A transference array aboard Middle Heaven supports rapid movement of people and resources to a paired array on Angel, but only while the two ends remain within workable range. (Chapter 817)
• Its planet-scale mass brings enormous capacity and resilience at the cost of speed, maneuverability, and appearance compared with smaller purpose-built bastions. (Chapters 735–737)

Ownership and custody