Upon one side of the mechanical royal court · the Iron Guard star gate
"Strange — how is it these warships asking passage have no names at all?" A mechanical intelligent life's eyes turned, and it gave out a voice of perplexity like a child's.
"They may be some warships kept secret.
"Look — their privileges of passage are of the highest," another companion explained, busy meanwhile at his own work.
And just at this time the star gate completed the throwing across of a batch of warships.
Warship after warship came through out of the star gate and stood in the berthing district outside it.
The two mechanical intelligent lives looked at the outward shape of those warships, and were dumbfounded, both of them.
For these warships they had never seen.
And though they had never seen them, they could feel a kind of oppression coming off these warships — a feeling the Machine Race's warships in service had never carried before.
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"Reporting — the Prisoner fleet has wholly completed the star-gate voyage," a mechanical sergeant reported to Ah-Yin.
"All Prisoner starships, hasten at once to the royal court's field!" Ah-Yin gave the order with some anxiety.
For she had before this had word of the royal court's field from Ah-Jin, and could feel the crisis upon it!
The support of these warships is wanted urgently.
Beep, beep, beep, beep.
And at this time a video window sprang up; Ah-Yin hesitated but a moment, and touched to consent.
A man in sunglasses, bare to the waist, greeted Ah-Yin with a smile. "The warships are off the line and in service, and you say not a word to me about it.
"How is it your Machine Race too pulls its trousers up and knows a man no more?"
Ah-Yin said levelly, "By our agreement, this time we owe it to you.
"Thank you for furnishing this warship technology."
"To my thinking you are still too — what shall I say. Would it not have done simply to use my Owl Dragon-line warships ready-made?
"Have you not seen the Angel Race use my warships and knock the Demon Race's quasi-T6 Destroyer flat outright!" Zhao Chen said in his teasing way.
"Those conventional warships our Machine Race does not need.
"And those T5 warships you cannot furnish upon a great scale.
"It is this warship's technology alone that we needed.
"However it be, I must still thank you on the Machine Race's behalf," Ah-Yin said sincerely; and that is her true meaning besides.
"Speaking of it, you are strange people too.
"Have you truly no technology of T6-grade warships?
"Did you not inherit that Gaia Empire's legacy of technology?" Zhao Chen looked at Ah-Yin doubtfully.
Ah-Yin was silent a while, and then said, "Upon that piece of the matter, the mistress alone knows."
"Pah." Zhao Chen rolled his eyes.
"Is there anything further?" Ah-Yin inquired levelly.
"Very well then — your Machine Race truly does pull its trousers up and know a man no more.
"When the starships were building, three communications a day to me.
"And now, you would put a man out.
"Ah — the man goes and the bed grows cold." Zhao Chen wore an aggrieved air.
"The royal court's front-line field is urgent, and wants our support," Ah-Yin explained.
"Come now; it is the starships that run, not you.
"Never mind; for not loving there are ten thousand reasons." Zhao Chen touched at his two tearless eyes.
Ah-Yin said nothing.
This human is very strange; this while past he will often say such odd things — she knows not whether all men of the human race are so.
"How dull; it is like talking to a wooden man.
"I will not chat with you; go on with your fighting.
"When there is fresh news, remember to tell me." Zhao Chen waved a hand.
Ah-Yin cut the communication without a word more.
"Look at this woman — truly like a piece of steel; there is no warming her at all." Zhao Chen looked toward Lilith, sunning herself beside him in a black bathing suit.
"She is steel to begin with.
"And for those things you said — were she any woman of the human race, she must have had you up for harassment." Lilith rolled her eyes.
"You have furnished the Machine Race with the technical drawings of that T5 Prisoner-class Heavy Interstellar Assault Battleship.
"Do you not fear you are rearing a tiger for a calamity?" Chu Xuan, come along upon the same holiday, inquired.
Zhao Chen pursed his lips and laughed. "This warship's technology has very great defects; though it be a T5-grade warship.
"Its merits are plain, and its faults plainer still.
"Only that it happens to suit the Machine Race. And as for rearing a tiger — do you think the Machine Race would dare use the warships I gave them to fight us?"
"What merits, what faults?" Chu Xuan inquired in her curiosity; and as for the latter half of his words, she could not but call to mind a certain power within the old Starlight Empire that had suffered just such a loss.
Zhao Chen raised a hand, and the holographic image of a warship showed before them all.
"The T5 Prisoner-class Heavy Interstellar Assault Battleship — this is an exceedingly particular class of warship.
"First, its fault: its course of building is exceedingly cumbersome.
"It wants a longer time to build than any Owl Dragon T5 warship we now have!
"But this fault, set beneath the Machine Race's vast system of industry, becomes on the contrary not so plain; which is why I sought out that Ah-Yin of myself, and why Ah-Yin should take an interest in this warship.
"And as for the greatest reason she was willing to ask this warship of us.
"It has the power to challenge a quasi-T6 warship!
"Only that its place is more like that of a suicide warship.
"It has every fitting proper to the grade of a T5 interstellar battleship — all of them it has.
"And next, it is fitted with a short-range assault function, which can raise a heavy warship's speed for a short time and let it come killing into the enemy's array.
"And within a short time form a strangling within one district!
"But if this short-range assault function be used, there follows a stretch of time when the supply of energy falls short and the speed of sailing drops!
"And it is for that cause besides that it may very easily be caught deep within the enemy's array and never come back again.
"Which does not answer to our Owl Dragon style and system of war, and so this warship will not serve within our Owl Dragon Legion."
Hearing the Commander's account, Chu Xuan nodded in understanding.
"That answers well enough to its name — the Prisoner… one who, in a crisis, makes a desperate throw for it." Lilith muttered it to herself beside them.
"Then with this warship of ours come to their relief.
"Will the field of the Machine Race's royal court not turn from danger to safety?" Chu Xuan asked.
Zhao Chen was silent a while, and did not speak.
Lilith said in his stead, "By ordinary reckoning, it should be so.
"But to the present we have still not found where the Demon Race's starship yards are, that produce so many warships.
"That is a grave hidden trouble.
"And so no one knows how many warships the Demon Race may yet burst out with hereafter."
"Then when do we strike?
"General Charlotte has been muttering of this business all this while, until she is vexed enough to pull her own fur out." Chu Xuan said it in her teasing.
"Soon, soon.
"This storm is very nearly at its end." Zhao Chen lay back in the beach chair and said it low.