The several defensive positions the Holy Dragon Angel Legion had laid out,
carried out the angel commander Tilia's order to the letter.
So much so that where an undead starship broke into a position.
Before the enemy could break through their own star-shield defense, they destroyed their own ship outright!
And by that covered the withdrawal of the other ships of that position to the lines behind, to fight on.
Up to now at least three hundred and more Angel warships had been lost to self-destruction.
"Report: our interstellar missiles are nearly spent. The missile ships can give the field no more fire support." The secretary-officer beside her reported it to the angel Tilia in haste.
The angel Tilia's face set.
An interstellar missile ship without missiles is no different from a wreck.
And the chief reason the field could be held as it was lay in the missile ships' fire support.
Lose that, and the state of the battle would go steeply downhill.
"How far is the system's evacuation?" the angel Tilia asked.
"Five parts in ten are still not away. And before this we were forced to give up three planets, which the undead army has taken. Upon those three planets there were at the least five hundred million who would not withdraw, or could not be got away in time. Every one of them has been converted into undead soldiers," the secretary-officer reported.
The angel Tilia's face was grave.
The pressure the enemy brought was too great by far.
Go on so, and they would face the most painful choice of all: to withdraw and abandon the Judgment Angel star system!
"That cursed Renee! She truly means to destroy her own homeland!" The angel Tilia could not keep from cursing.
And at this moment a bridge petty officer cried out: "Report! We have received a message from the Owl Dragon Interstellar Empire's military headquarters. They are sending a fleet to support us."
"Report! Abnormal spatial fluctuations in the ··* volume!" another officer called at the same time.
At this news every heart upon the bridge lifted,
as though a thread of light had shown through the black cloud overhead.
"They have come!" The angel Tilia looked at once toward that unstable volume.
And sure enough, rings of light very soon appeared there.
And with those rings,
interstellar warship after interstellar warship appeared out of empty space.
By the crests upon their hulls, these were the Owl Dragon Interstellar Empire's fleets, from the Owl Dragon First Legion Fleet Group!
The angel Tilia cast an eye over them: some fifty thousand, by the look of it.
By what she knew of the Owl Dragon fleets' establishment, that should be one Legion fleet's worth.
Very soon a video window sprang open.
And opposite was a very familiar figure.
Xue Xiaoxiao, three-star general of the Owl Dragon Interstellar Empire, and besides deputy commander of the Owl Dragon First Legion Fleet Group, and commander of the Second Legion under that group.
Xue Xiaoxiao first made her salute to the angel Tilia, and then said: "The Second Legion, under the Owl Dragon First Legion Fleet Group, is come by order to support your action. From here the command of this battlefield passes to me. Your Holy Dragon Angel Legion, and every Angel Race lord's legion fleet, and this star system, are wholly in my charge. Is that understood."
First the string of introduction, and hard upon it the setting out of her task and her authority.
Careless and slapdash as Xue Xiaoxiao commonly seems, she knows very well what is to be done and when!
"Understood," the angel Tilia said in earnest.
"First share the state of the battlefield with us," said Xue Xiaoxiao.
"Aye."
In the course of sharing that intelligence,
the angel Tilia set out the present case in detail besides, and the chief difficulties.
Having heard it through,
Xue Xiaoxiao looked at the two black star markers upon the interstellar holo-table.
She knit her brows slightly and muttered: "Two stars… that is indeed somewhat thorny. And a certain number of undead legion fleets have appeared already. If those two stars are not destroyed in time, then to wipe out these undead armies utterly will cost a very great price."
Having reckoned it over within herself,
Xue Xiaoxiao very soon made her decision.
She looked at the angel Tilia in the window: "I must tell you this. From this moment, you are to bend every effort to evacuating every soul within this system. Within thirty hours, can the evacuation be finished?"
"Thirty hours; wholly possible." The angel Tilia nodded; she seemed to have guessed the other's thought, and there was something tangled in her eyes.
"Very well. For the next thirty hours my fleet will hold these undead legions off you. And in thirty hours we shall open our attack upon this system's two stars, and destroy them! Is that understood. A word of reminder. This is not a discussion; it is notice." Xue Xiaoxiao said it gravely.
She had no wish to waste words upon the matter, and hoped the other understood what hung upon it.
The angel Tilia drew a deep breath and said gravely: "My lady General may set her mind at rest. I understand the case well, and I understand your purpose in destroying these two stars. Have no misgiving whatever, so long as this disaster can be ended. To lose one star system, against having the whole Angel Race's territory face disaster. We know well which weighs more."
Xue Xiaoxiao nodded in satisfaction; meeting one who saw reason made things a good deal easier.
Meet instead someone who looks before and behind and cannot bear to give up a system, and coercive means must be used.
The order would certainly be carried out in the end, but the process would bring a little more trouble.
"Very well. I hope our cooperation is a happy one." Xue Xiaoxiao showed a slight smile.
"Aye."
The whole strategy being settled,
what followed was naturally Xue Xiaoxiao's plan entire.
Before the inhabitants of this system were away, these undead hosts must be held off.
For were the two stars destroyed now, the aftershock of it would carry harm to every planet of the system, from the nearest outward.
The whole process is not instantaneous, but it is a matter of only a few hours.
And by then, for the planet-dwellers not got away in time, there would be one outcome only.
Death!
So all this had to be arranged beforehand.
Thirty hours.
With fifty thousand Owl Dragon-line warships, holding these undead hosts thirty hours was more than enough.
"Notify the staff. We are the first fleet to open full war upon the undead race; record the whole course of the fighting in detail. It may serve afterward as a sample to help the other legion fleets." Xue Xiaoxiao did not forget to add it.
The battle opened.
The Owl Dragon-line warships began to relieve the Holy Dragon Angel Legion's ships.
T5 and T4 Owl Dragon-line warships moved up into the line one after another.
The heavy guns of the T5 Spear-of-Sin-class Heavy Interstellar Heavy-Artillery Ships ran out and stood ready, able at any moment to pour fire upon the undead fleet opposite.
Upon the T5 Crimson-Reaper-class Heavy Interstellar Strategic Missile Ships the launchers opened one after another, interstellar missiles ranged in their silos; to look down upon it was to see something like a honeycomb, enough to set a man's horror of dense patterns going.
More warships made ready in their turn.
Every muzzle turned toward those two black stars.
And besides this, unlike the way Owl Dragon legion fleets had fought before, the carriers' fighters and drones did not push past the line of their own accord to contend for command of the interstellar air.
That practice may serve against the interstellar hive-race.
But against these undead legion fleets, which can infect and convert, it has no effect at all.
And may indeed be handing the enemy troops for nothing.
So in this war against the undead, the Owl Dragon high command had issued an order beforehand: fighters and drones are not permitted to open attacks upon the undead of their own accord.
But within their own side's field of fire they may serve in joint defense, or in defensive counterattack.
And so the risk of these fighters and drones being infected and converted is greatly lessened.
Thirty hours.
The whole Judgment Angel star system[1] lay steeped beneath that gunfire.
So much so that the whole system took on the look of a river drawn between two camps; and at the meeting line were the guns of both sides, and the undead legion fleets charging without care for themselves.
The angel Tilia watched it all the while, looking upon that vast interstellar field.
Looking at those undead starships and undead troops coming without end,
and among them she even saw vast bodies like bone dragons, with a fighting power terrible enough to match a T3 warship.
Had it been her own Holy Dragon Angel Legion, she reckoned that in these thirty hours, even fighting and withdrawing by turns and kiting the enemy, they could hardly have held against so endless and so uncanny an assault.
At some point the Holy Dragon Angel Legion, which had once at least been able to see the Owl Dragon Legion's back before it, had been left far behind.
"Report: the last group of transports is taking the last of the evacuated through the Star Gate. Within thirty minutes the whole evacuation should be complete!" the secretary-officer reported to the angel Tilia.
"How many are not away?" the angel Tilia asked.
This policy, in truth, was one of consent.
The present danger and the case were told to every system, and those upon them were left to withdraw of their own will.
But even knowing that the star was to be destroyed, there would still be some old ones, or some stubborn ones, who chose to stay.
"Some five hundred million still, upon the several planets, who have chosen to stay. Averaged out, some fifty million each," the secretary-officer said helplessly. "Our people have worked upon them these thirty hours without cease. And still they will not be persuaded. Eight parts in ten are the old, who will not leave their native soil. Ah…"
"Let it be; it is their own choice. Whatever comes of it, no one else is to blame." The angel Tilia showed no excess of mercy; she had given every soul upon those planets a fair chance.
They had chosen not to withdraw, and there was no help for it.
"By the Owl Dragon General's order. Once the civilians' evacuation is finished. Ours follows. And last of all, theirs. We must draw off a small party to take over the Star Gate, and withdraw through it with the last of the Owl Dragon fleet. I shall stand as this side's representative. Only arrange me a few warships." The angel Tilia chose to withdraw last, together with the Owl Dragon fleet.
"My lady!" The secretary-officer was unwilling, and would have urged her commander to leave first.
But the angel Tilia said outright: "It is an order. And set against that part of the withdrawal, I am needed more here. Should anything go amiss, I can help from here."
"Aye." In the end the secretary-officer carried out the order, unwilling as she was; and she herself, as the angel Tilia required, went to another vice-flagship to take up command of that part of the Holy Dragon Angel Legion which was withdrawing.
Upon her side, Xue Xiaoxiao too received the angel Tilia's report that the evacuation was broadly complete.
Xue Xiaoxiao let out a breath, and looked at the deadlocked field.
Steady though it looked from outside, she who stood in it had felt in these thirty hours how terrible these undead legions were.
No… terrible is not the word.
It is the loathsomeness of the way they fight.
Careful as she was, in the course of it several hundred Owl Dragon warships were still infected and converted.
Though at first she ordered those infected ships destroyed, to keep them from becoming targets the enemy could copy without end.
The process left Xue Xiaoxiao sickened for a good while.
Far more sickening than the interstellar hive-race and its seas of bugs.
"We can end this loathsome fight at last." Xue Xiaoxiao contacted the imperial high command, told them the case here, and applied for star-destruction support.
For it must be known that to destroy a star takes exceedingly great energy.
And at present only a few very large weapons could destroy a star at all, and only by pouring out energy over a long time.
The Angel Race, for instance, once made trial of it themselves.
Upon a moon they built a vast weapon, near a hundred times the scale of the strongest energy weapon upon a T5 Angel-line warship.
Then they furnished it with a great mass of energy, and only after some full day of continuous output was that star at last destroyed.
And here, that method plainly would not serve.
But happily the Owl Dragon Interstellar Empire had a stronger trump card.
With a vast halo of light, a warship suddenly appeared out of empty space.
In the moment it appeared, it seemed to wear the very halo of a protagonist.
A hull liveried in black and red, giving off an air of killing.
This was the strongest warship the Owl Dragon Interstellar Empire now had.
The T6 Rakshasa-Hades-class Interstellar Dreadnought!
The angel Tilia looked upon this ship, without dispute the strongest in the known universe today.
She had guessed already why it had come here.
It would take upon itself the work of destroying those two stars!