"Something that smells good?" Zhao Chen was greatly astonished.
He was no fine dish, that he should smell good…
Then something suddenly came into Zhao Chen's mind.
He looked at Hive Princess, who was near to drooling, and said: "Little Bug, when we met and were together before. You had no such feeling, had you?"
Hive Princess shook her head.
"Which is to say that this feeling has come only now." A light came into Zhao Chen's eyes.
Hive Princess nodded.
Between the self he was now and the self he had been, if there were any great change at all, there was but one possibility.
And that was the injection of the T6 super-soldier serum.
And at this Zhao Chen marked besides the tangled and troubled look within Hive Princess's eyes.
"Little Bug, what are you thinking?" Zhao Chen asked.
Hive Princess was as a child that has done wrong, and dared not speak.
"It is nothing. Little Bug, say whatever you would say. Brother will not blame you."
Hive Princess hesitated a moment, and then said with great care: "I… I do not know why. I want to bite Brother, just… it feels… it feels as though Brother… would taste very good… I am sorry, Brother… This is certainly not Little Bug's own thought; Little Bug would never hurt Brother!"
Hive Princess was as a child repenting of some wrong.
Zhao Chen was not the least angry at this terrible notion of hers.
He was thinking rather how he might test his own guess.
So strange a showing in Hive Princess must have its cause in himself.
Then let him make an experiment of it.
Zhao Chen drew a golden dagger from his waist, a weapon he carried always upon him.
He drew it along his own forearm, governing at the same time the speed at which his body healed.
For had he not governed it, the wound would have closed in a few seconds.
The blood flowed out.
But Zhao Chen marked that within his blood, which should have been bright red, he seemed to see faint golden particles.
"Gulp." At this Hive Princess, calm until now, was as a shark that has smelled blood.
She stared at the blood upon Zhao Chen's wrist, swallowing without cease.
Yet she was still at war with herself, and even slapped at her own face,[1] and made to climb down from Zhao Chen of her own accord.
For in her thinking she would by no means allow herself to commit any act that hurt her brother.
"It is nothing. Little Bug, you may lick it," Zhao Chen said.
"I cannot, I must not hurt Brother! Little Bug is a good little bug, not a bad little bug." Hive Princess shook her head resolutely.
Zhao Chen smiled and held his wrist to Hive Princess's mouth: "It is nothing; I permit it. For I must verify certain things. Take it as Brother's command; you are only carrying out a task of Brother's."
"A task… a command… Little Bug is very obedient; and since this is Brother's command… then Little Bug…" Hive Princess could bear it no longer, and fell upon Zhao Chen's wrist.
But the desire within her mind did not carry her reason away; in dread of hurting Zhao Chen, she used only her tongue, licking with the greatest care at the blood that flowed.
She licked for some ten minutes and more.
Then Hive Princess gave a sudden belch of fullness, and, like one drunk with wine, swayed there and grew heavy with sleep.
In the end it was Zhao Chen who caught her in time, so that she did not fall upon the ground.
"Is this… drunkenness?" Zhao Chen looked at Hive Princess in his puzzlement.
With Hive Princess in this state he could not know how his experiment had turned out; he could only wait for her to wake of herself.
So Zhao Chen carried Hive Princess, and began to wander here and there about this world.
Several hours passed.
Hive Princess woke at last; she opened her sleep-blurred eyes and looked at Zhao Chen before her.
Only then did she come wholly to herself, and sat straight up at once: "How did I fall asleep!"
"How do you feel now? Have you any particular sensation?" Zhao Chen asked.
"A particular sensation?" Hive Princess was blank a moment, and then recalled that she had licked her brother's blood.
She began to examine her own condition in earnest.
And very soon she cried out in astonishment: "My hive-race factor has grown stronger!"
"Hive-race factor?" Zhao Chen was somewhat puzzled by the term.
"The hive-race factor… it is… it is…" Hive Princess seemed not to know how to explain it, and stumbled there a moment.
After a good while she said: "It is a thing of great importance to us rulers of the hive-race. It bears upon the quality of the Hive Motherships and hive-race units we control and cultivate. Put it this way: a low-grade hive-race factor may cultivate only T4 Hive Motherships, while a high-grade one may cultivate T5 Hive Motherships. And more hive-race factor means the speed of cultivating Hive Motherships can be greatly increased!"
Zhao Chen understood.
This hive-race factor amounted in fact to Hive Princess's productive power.
Which is to say that his own blood could raise Hive Princess's gift for production?
"Then by your reckoning now, how much has your ability risen against what it was?" Zhao Chen asked.
Hive Princess counted upon her fingers a moment, and then held up three of them: "By three parts in ten at the least!"
Three in ten!
It sounds very little.
But anyone with eyes knows well.
If a starship works could gain three parts in ten of productive power out of nothing, and raise the quality of the warships it produced besides.
That is simply to leap a chasm.
"Then, Little Bug, can you drink more?" Zhao Chen pointed at the place upon his wrist where the wound could no longer be seen, with the dried blood still there.
This time Hive Princess had none of her former fierce desire; she shook her head and patted her belly: "It is full. There is no more room."
It seemed there was no drinking his blood without end, and so raising her power to cultivate a hive-race fleet without limit.
"Then I shall find a way hereafter to store some for you. And when you wish to drink, you may drink a little," Zhao Chen said.
"Truly?" Hive Princess looked at Zhao Chen in glad surprise, as one who has been given some extraordinary gift.
Zhao Chen stroked Hive Princess's head: "To defeat Order, Little Bug, your strength matters greatly too."
Hive Princess nodded heavily, and shook her small fist like a fighter, and said without wavering: "Little Bug will grow very strong, and will protect Brother and the sisters. Before, Little Bug could not protect Mama, nor Granny Bug, nor everyone. But hereafter, Little Bug will never let anyone bully you! Above all that great villain Order. Little Bug will bite them to pieces!"
And so saying, Hive Princess made besides as though she opened a great bloody maw.
Thereafter Zhao Chen looked over this hive-race planet a while and took his leave.
Before leaving, Zhao Chen filled several empty bottles with his own blood of set purpose, and, to keep it from spoiling, put them into a storage container and gave them to Hive Princess.
So little blood was nothing for Zhao Chen to recover.
And Hive Princess wore the look of one who has come by a treasure; holding those storage containers in her hands, she waved without cease at the shuttle as it flew away.
Zhao Chen returned to the Dragon Emperor.
He looked at the scar upon his arm, already gone.
This arrangement of Zhao Chen's might well be the rearing of a tiger to his own harm.
Hive Princess was of the hive-race, after all, and none could say how things would stand hereafter.
But now Zhao Chen had no choice; if his own strength was to be raised in a short time, against whatever threat Order might send.
Hive Princess's ability, and the hive-race fleet she bred, were beyond doubt the fittest means.
In doing anything at all, one cannot bear no risk whatever.
Zhao Chen chose to trust Hive Princess, at least for now.
The Dragon Emperor and the Emperor's Guard Fleet made for the Star Gate, and sailed out of this system.
Thereafter Zhao Chen came to the Gate of Gaia.
The Machine Race's royal court had been the greater part dismantled.
Because a great mass of things had to be carried through, and the Gate of Gaia opened only in that gap which came once a month.
So the Machine Race's chiefs had simply pulled down the royal court that shrouded the Gate of Gaia, that more Machine Race warships might sail into it, and the traffic go the faster.
It was the end of January now.
"How is it that you have come?" A figure of light appeared upon the Dragon Emperor's bridge.
"Am I not welcome?" Zhao Chen said in banter.
"How should you not be welcome? We may be reckoned old friends now. At least I hold it so." The little girl blinked at Zhao Chen.
Zhao Chen shook his head with a light laugh: "Old friends? An old friend whose name I do not even know."
The little girl pouted and glared at Zhao Chen: "Why do you carbon-based lives care so much about names? It is nothing but a designation."
"But you said yourself that we may not meet again for years to come. And when I recall you then, I shall not know so much as a name to call you by. When I speak of this old friend of mine to others, what am I to say? That old granny of the Machine Race who has lived ten thousand years?" Zhao Chen could not keep from laughing.
"You are the old granny!" The little girl glared at Zhao Chen.
Then, all of a sudden, she fell quiet.
She raised her hand, and a photograph was projected before Zhao Chen's eyes.
In the photograph were several people in some kind of research dress.
And in the middle was a little girl, exactly like the little girl before Zhao Chen, brimming with a happy smile.
If there were one thing different, it was perhaps the eyes.
The little girl in the photograph had eyes very bright, very clear and innocent.
The little girl before him had bright eyes too, but within them too much was pressed down.
Ten thousand years, even for a mechanical life, once she had consciousness, the memory of such a stretch of time is enough to press a great deal of feeling down.
"This is the Gaia Empire's royal academy of sciences. I am what they researched and built. The little girl in the middle is the Gaia Empire's little princess, and at that time the Gaia Empire's youngest first-rank scientist besides. In artificial intelligence and mechanical life above all, she may be called second to none. She… created me! By your way of speaking, she is my mother. And so I have kept to the habit of wearing her shape." The little girl raised her hand toward the girl within the light, but it passed through in a moment.
"If you must have me have a name. Then call me Minai."
Zhao Chen knit his brows; he looked at the little girl, and put out his hand: "I am very glad to know you, Mili.[2] My name is Zhao Chen."
Mili?
"She is she, and she is not you, and you are not she. Minai is her name. Nor are you a stand-in for her name. She is more like your mother, or your elder sister. So I think Mili is the name that suits you better." Zhao Chen kept his hand out still, and looked at the little girl with a smile.
The little girl was blank a moment; there was a glimmer in her eyes, and she put out her hand too, in the shape of clasping Zhao Chen's across the empty air.
And said with a pretty petulance: "Mili? What sort of strange name is that? But since you will insist upon giving me one, I shall be gracious and use it. My name is Mili. I am very glad to know you."
"Five years. If within five years you have not come back. I shall go and fetch you." Zhao Chen stared at Mili, and said it in all earnest.
Give him five years, and he had the confidence to bring his Owl Dragon Empire to a growth that could stand shoulder to shoulder with Order.
And by then there would be no need for this little girl to go on fighting in silence within that pitch-black space.
Mili's lips trembled slightly; she turned her eyes away, as though holding something back by force.
"You… you… I do not want fetching by you. Never mind you; you have said some strange things today.[3] Go back quickly; your empire has a great many matters yet for you to deal with. An Emperor now, and still with no proper gravity about you." Mili set her hands upon her hips and glared at Zhao Chen.
Zhao Chen gave a slight smile.
Thereafter Mili vanished, and Zhao Chen took his fleet back to the Owl Dragon Star System.
Galactic Star Calendar, year 3037, the beginning of February.
Zhao Chen and the high officers of the Owl Dragon Empire's fleets, all who could free themselves at all, gathered here at the T5 Galaxy No. 1 Industrial Base in the Owl Dragon Star System.
The vast gate, shut these several months, now opened slowly,
laying bare a certain vast hull within.
Had anyone looked closely, they would have found besides that the outward shape of this Galaxy No. 1 Industrial Base was altogether unlike what it had been when the Hades came into port.
Larger by several times, at the least!
The one explanation for this was that, in the course of remaking the warship within, the space the building required had grown greater and greater.
"This… this must be four or five hundred kilometers at the least?" Xue Xiaoxiao swallowed beside them. If it were truly so great.
Then it answered wholly to her own notion of a great ship.
Up to now, the holder of the record for the largest interstellar warship in the known universe was still the former T5 Hades-class Interstellar Dreadnought, with its astonishing hull of a hundred kilometers and more!
But now this strong and mysterious warship was about to break that record.
"It is well that the Galaxy Industrial Base is a movable block. Had it been any other building works, they could not have borne this task of construction at all," Lilith said beside them in admiration.
Everyone began to wait upon the appearance of this great ship.
The gate opened wholly.
A bow livery of black and red appeared before them all.
And most conspicuous of all was that Abyss Great Cannon; there is simply no language for the terrible weight of its presence.
One who did not know might even take it in error for the entrance of some flight deck.
"This moment is come at last." Zhao Chen too drew a deep breath; though he had known her data long since, those were dead words upon a page.
Far from the wonder of an interstellar great ship set before one's own eyes.
The T6 Rakshasa-Hades-class Interstellar Dreadnought would show herself for the first time!