The mechanical royal court's highest command
"Reporting — the Demon Race's assault has of a sudden slackened.
"Some parts of the demon legion fleets have even halted their attack." A mechanical adjutant reported the word to Commander Ah-Jin.
The pressure within Ah-Jin's heart could at last be set down; she looked at the interstellar war sand-table before her, where several places were marked with a skull.
These skulls stand for quasi-T6 Destroyer-class Heavy Interstellar Battleships destroyed.
In the two months and more before this, not one quasi-T6 Destroyer had been recorded destroyed.
And within these few short hours just past, five have been lost outright!
A fifth of the five and twenty quasi-T6 Destroyers at present known to be in Demon Race service.
Which is beyond doubt a vast victory.
And this sudden turn upon the field is the cause besides of the other side's halting its assault of a sudden.
For what has been lost is no T4 warship nor T5 warship, but quasi-T6 Destroyer-class Heavy Interstellar Battleships!
To lose five at one breath — even they cannot bear a loss of such a degree.
Beep, beep, beep.
At this time a video window appeared before Ah-Jin.
Opposite was the maker of this operation, Ah-Yin.
"Ah-Yin, it is splendid.
"Thanks to these warships you brought, we have made the case firm.
"And destroyed five quasi-T6 Destroyer-class Heavy Interstellar Battleships at one stroke besides!" In the manner of Ah-Jin's speaking, some gladness could now be heard.
The oppression of these two months past was too bitter.
But Ah-Yin had no great gladness; she said with a somewhat complicated look, "Though we have destroyed five quasi-T6 Destroyers.
"We have at the same time paid the price of eight and twenty T5 Prisoner-class Heavy Interstellar Assault Battleships fallen, and thirteen T5 Prisoners grievously wounded."
Ah-Jin seemed not to hear the deeper meaning within Ah-Yin's words; she only nodded and said, "Just so; we have paid some loss besides.
"But set against the fruit we have gained, that loss is beyond doubt worth it!
"Before this I spent every means there was — even, catching a fit moment, setting fifty T5 warships to form a beheading fleet — and could not destroy so much as one quasi-T6 Destroyer.
"And now, with these T5 Prisoners you have brought, we have beyond doubt a means upon the forward field of overawing the enemy's Destroyers!"
"Mm." Ah-Yin said nothing further.
Thereafter the two exchanged some words upon the case of the field, and the communication ended.
Ah-Yin sat in her captain's chair; and at this moment she had, of all things, a feeling of her very soul being lost and scattered. She raised a hand and reached that man of her own motion.
The sunlit beach of before had turned to night and a hot spring, and within the background one could see several fair shapes — though for the curling of the mist they could not be seen clearly.
"Well? You have gained a fair fruit, I take it." Zhao Chen looked at the Ah-Yin who had reached him of herself, and asked it outright.
"Mm.
"We have destroyed five quasi-T6 Destroyers." Yet no gladness whatever could be heard in Ah-Yin's manner.
Zhao Chen marked Ah-Yin's strangeness; he looked at her in perplexity. "Five quasi-T6 Destroyers destroyed — ought that not to be a matter for gladness?
"Why is it I feel you cannot be glad at all?"
Ah-Yin was silent a while; those eyes of hers, so like a human's, turned upon Zhao Chen. "Owl Dragon's lord, let me ask you.
"Were it you, would you choose to use this class, the T5 Prisoner-class Heavy Interstellar Assault Battleship?"
Being asked such a question of a sudden by Ah-Yin, Zhao Chen was for a moment slow to answer.
But he said it honestly for all that. "I would not use it; nor do I hope that one day I shall use this class of warship."
"Why?
"For the winning of a victory, is this warship not very reliable?
"Not only has she no mean fighting power of her own; that Mad Prisoner mode can besides, at the last extremity, work vast losses upon an enemy ship.
"By the result of our computers' reckoning, this warship's ratio of worth to cost is the highest at present known within the universe!" Ah-Yin asked in her perplexity.
"Ratio of worth to cost?" Zhao Chen muttered the phrase; he shook his head with a light laugh and said, "It may be that to your Machine Race's thinking everything may be looked at by worth against cost, by figures, by likelihoods.
"But here with me, a warship is not merely a warship.
"Upon her there are thousands upon thousands of warriors besides — warriors who trust me, and are willing to fight for me.
"My principles do not allow me to send them onto a gravestone."
While Zhao Chen spoke, Ah-Yin kept her eyes fixed upon Zhao Chen's; and so she may be certain that this man spoke the truth.
He would not do it.
"So… is this what you call life?" Ah-Yin muttered.
"You mechanical lives, though you too be called life, and have now no mean intelligence besides.
"Yet in one thing there is a vast difference between you and us — beyond that want of creativity.
"You do not cherish your own lives.
"It may be that to your thinking your lives too are no more than a stretch of program," Zhao Chen said sincerely.
"Cherish… our own lives?" Ah-Yin hesitated.
She called to mind how, when she had set out to her subordinates the several performances of these T5 Prisoners, those mechanical-life subordinates had set down every procedure of operation without a change of countenance.
Including the suicide attack at the last.
Calling it to mind now, there is an air of the uncanny throughout it.
As though those who were to carry out the suicide attack were not themselves at all.
"Though that mistress of yours is rather another matter.
"The feeling she gives me is much like our own — for all the world like a child that will not grow up." Zhao Chen called that little girl to mind.
To speak truth, did he not know her standing, it would be very hard to believe that little girl a mechanical life.
"The mistress…" Ah-Yin called to mind besides how, when she was with the mistress, she would point at herself and Ah-Jin and say: the two of you are dead and dreary things, and no fun at all.
"But you seem now to be somewhat other than you were before.
"Though… I cannot say wherein you differ, either." Zhao Chen looked doubtfully at the Ah-Yin across the picture.
Ah-Yin of a sudden understood something, and smiled faintly. "It is nothing.
"I thank the Owl Dragon's lord, upon the Machine Race's behalf, for the help he has given us this time."
"This is not for nothing, mind.
"We have our agreement made beforehand." Zhao Chen at once wore the look of a crafty merchant.
Ah-Yin nodded with a smile.
"And that mistress of yours — when in the end is she coming back?
"It is going on half a year and more." Zhao Chen raised the little girl again.
"The mistress… should be back soon." Ah-Yin gave an answer that might be read two ways.
Thereafter they talked idly a while, and the communication was broken off.
Zhao Chen leaned against the edge of the hot spring and looked at the starry sky.
This leisured time is very nearly at its end.