The mecha store.
A squad of soldiers who had been here already came up before that cleft in the wall, but there was no man to be seen there now.
"Quick! Find the fellow who got in here!"
"Call up every camera's picture inside the store, and find this man in the shortest time there is!"
The squad fell to talking it over among themselves.
The squad leader knit his brows and looked at the communication window before him.
"What is it you are saying? That not one watching picture inside the store has found any trace of the man who got in?"
"That is so. When the store's wall was first opened it threw up a great deal of dust, and we could not see at all whether the man came in. And now there is no trace of him in any place any camera takes."
The men in the mecha store's chief control room watched every picture in their anxiety, but truly could not see the man who had got in.
"How is that possible! The fellow is inside the store at this moment. To take so great a risk to get into our mecha store, he must have some dangerous purpose. He must be found in the shortest time there is. Thermal imaging! Use thermal imaging! I do not believe he can dodge a thermal scan!" the squad leader ordered.
"That… this mecha store of ours has only watching gear; it is not fitted with thermal imaging," came the helpless answer.
Hearing such an answer, the squad leader had something of the feeling of a fist landing in cotton.
He was silent a moment.
And then said: "I shall set men to go on looking for him within the store. Do you keep watching every picture, and the moment anything suspicious shows, tell me at once. I do not believe this fellow can hide himself in this place and we not find him!"
"Yes!"
"All the squad, hear the order. Spread out in parties of three. And the moment you find anyone suspicious, fire at once to give warning!"
"Yes!"
A hundred men and more, divided into thirty parties and more, spread out and began searching this store for the man who had worked his way in.
But search as they would.
Not one thread nor trace of him did they find.
The man before the monitors had his head all over sweat by now, and still saw no suspicious person anywhere.
Curse it!
This store is large, but under a search as close as this, how should the man who got in not be found?
Where in the world was he?
And at this very moment, in the most conspicuous place in the whole store,
there stood a mecha at its berth, a quasi-T4 combat mecha.
The one quasi-T4 combat mecha in this place,
which only a few officers within this city have the authority to pilot.
And which others, wishing to go inside it even to make repairs, must be granted authority before they may,
so that it entered no man's head that inside this quasi-T4 mecha there was hidden the very man they sought.
Zhao Chen had crawled slowly up through a conduit to the mecha's cockpit.
This mecha he was seeing with his own eyes for the first time.
But while resting before the fighting, Zhao Chen had been through all the battlefield files.
Among which were the interstellar mecha and combat mecha in service in both universes.
And this quasi-T4 combat mecha was among them.
Its name is the Lancer-class Medium Combat Mecha.
And it belongs among combat mecha of the ground-fighting kind.
It is no standard-issue mecha, but an elite one built in small numbers, using a great deal of technology at T3 grade,
but its fighting strength reaches quasi-T4.
And in the keeping of a planet's peace,
set against interstellar warships, combat mecha commonly bear the greater part of the business,
so that this quasi-T4 Lancer-class Medium Combat Mecha may be called the flagship mecha of this city's mecha force.
And Zhao Chen, having seen some of this mecha's files, had near enough the greater part of its performance and technology clear in his mind.
So that, though he had no authority, in a bare few seconds Zhao Chen had felt his way inside without god or ghost knowing of it.
And what remained was to make this mecha move.
Zhao Chen sat down in the cockpit.
He tapped to start it.
Some part of the mecha's electronics started up, but it was dim there still, and nothing of what passed within could be seen from outside; all stayed quiet.
"Please enter the authority command," an electronic voice said before Zhao Chen inside the mecha.
Authority Zhao Chen naturally had none.
The corner of Zhao Chen's mouth lifted slightly; he raised a hand, and a virtual keyboard appeared before him.
And thereupon his fingers began leaping quickly across that keyboard.
While in the frame before him the code of that window, 'Please enter the authority command', began by degrees to blur.
A minute went by so.
And of the three minutes he had agreed with Zhao Jie and the rest that they should win him once he was inside the mecha store, two were gone already.
Zhao Chen did not know how matters stood outside now.
But he could judge at the least that the fighting went on out there.
For Zhao Chen could faintly hear the footsteps inside the store; the footsteps of those still searching for him were there, but were not growing more.
Which showed that the enemy outside was still held off by Zhao Jie and the rest.
Ding.
'Authority entry complete.'
The whole of the mecha's operating interface before Zhao Chen's eyes lit up in that moment.
And at the same time the mecha's engine and energy systems began to start.
"And now it is our turn to strike back." Zhao Chen locked his hands together and stretched his arms out.
And then sat back in the cockpit.
……
Crunch.
A soldier of the squad, searching within the mecha store,
heard some sound all of a sudden, and looked the way it came from.
And found no figure of any man.
But very soon he found what was amiss.
It was that quasi-T4 Lancer-class Medium Combat Mecha standing there at its berth.
For a light had appeared at the place of its head,
which stands for this mecha having started.
And thereupon a gun at its breast rose up.
"Curse it! The Lancer has started!" this soldier cried out shrilly all of a sudden.
And in that moment every man there marked this Lancer-class Medium Combat Mecha.
And thereupon,
the sound of guns went up.
That gun poured out its curtain of shot, and the rounds swept across one stretch of ground after another.
And those who had been the hunters, and were seeking Zhao Chen still, were suddenly the prey instead.
And struck by that gun, they fell one after another into pools of their own blood, the blood flying.
While those mecha standing at their berths were destroyed, one after another.
And slaughter filled this mecha store.
"Curse it! How does he come to work that Lancer!" The squad leader broke and ran for the great door.
For to go on hiding here was to have no fate but butchery.
He could not make out how that man could fly a Lancer that wanted authority to it; his one thought now was to save his life.
And it seemed he would run clear of the mecha store's great door.
But the next instant the curtain of shot broke his body to pieces outright.
And of his body there was left no more than flesh and blood spread upon the ground.