And at that very moment,
a window of video communication was thrown up in the air outright before the communications tower.
It was likely that soldiers of the enemy were hidden yet within the buildings about them.
And that the enemy's soldiers, carrying out an order, had thrown this picture up, and with sound to it besides.
"Leader of the Star Alliance universe. I know that you are here. Our sovereign has said that so long as you are willing to surrender. I can make certain of your safety and your soldiers'. This dying struggle of yours here is wholly in vain. One round from my warship's guns is enough to destroy that communications tower. For your own sake, and for your universe's. Give over your resistance!"
Song Chen listened to the other side's call to surrender.
His countenance did not change.
He looked back at the message still going out behind him.
"Pay them no heed. Keep sending!"
"Yes."
Song Chen watched coldly as that warship came nearer and nearer.
It may be they had it in mind to take him alive.
"Do you stay here. And whatever befalls, the sending of these messages must be made certain of." And having said it, Song Chen sprang out through that broken floor-to-ceiling window outright.
"My lord!" Several soldiers cried out in alarm.
But the next instant a rope shot out and caught the communications tower's outer wall.
And carried Song Chen quickly up.
Crunch.
The Lancer mecha stood at this moment upon the communications tower's very top, like a giant planted there, waiting upon that warship in the distance.
And Zhao Chen, waiting for the warship to come nearer, heard some sound.
And thereupon saw a mechanical claw shoot up and catch the roof's edge.
And with a rustling of some kind, a figure vaulted up.
Zhao Chen knit his brows and looked at the man who had appeared before him.
Song Chen?
"How is it you have come up here?" Zhao Chen asked, not understanding.
He did not use the communications gear, but spoke straight out through the mecha's outer voice.
"Your thinking I have guessed. Standing here, you will become the enemy's mark. But with me here. They want me alive, so they dare not fire upon me." Song Chen pointed at that warship, which had marked the mecha atop the tower by now.
Her main guns and her secondary guns had locked upon Zhao Chen's Lancer already.
And as he spoke, Song Chen went up with both hands and both feet, and in three moves and five had climbed to the place of the Lancer's shoulder.
He set one hand against the mecha's head and stood upon its shoulder.
And the wind of that height set his clothes streaming.
But the body of him stood there straight.
One must say the fellow had a sovereign's bearing in him indeed.
"Have you thought it through? If you come along with me, I do not answer for your safety," said Zhao Chen.
"I am the Star Alliance's Leader. What need have I of a common soldier like you to guard me?" A trace of a smile showed on Song Chen's face.
Zhao Chen did not answer.
"Though there are no few secrets upon this common soldier's person. Are you truly this 'Zhao Chen'?" Song Chen could not in truth wait until this task was over.
And asked it outright, coming straight to the point.
Nor did Zhao Chen answer this question either.
"By the look of it, you are not so simple a thing as 'Zhao Chen'. A man may grow very fast in a short time, but he can never change so as to overturn heaven and earth. Unless he was never of this world to begin with." Song Chen's words struck Zhao Chen squarely.
Zhao Chen's heart gave a jolt.
Could this fellow have guessed that he had crossed over?
"Am I to call you Zhao Chen? Or a crosser-over from another world?" Song Chen said it plainly.
And Zhao Chen spoke at last. "Saying such a thing to me now, aren't you afraid I may simply wipe you out?"
"You will not," Song Chen said without the least ceremony.
"You are gambling."
"I am not gambling. Rather, I feel no wish to kill in you. When I gave the order that planets invaded by the aliens should be struck from orbit at every point. Even my own subordinates upon the bridge would have some hidden wish to kill me from time to time. But in you it has never been there at all. So you will not kill me. Or rather, we are of one kind," Song Chen said calmly.
Of one kind?
Zhao Chen asked it of his own heart.
If in his Owl Dragon universe such an invasion by some creature were to happen, would he use means so extreme?
Zhao Chen did not follow the thought further; it may be the answer had been there all along, only shut away in some place.
And wanted a key to open it.
And that key is a scene, an occasion.
By good fortune Zhao Chen had not met with that 'key' to this day.
And Song Chen had met with it.
"If we are not enemies. Then I hope that once this fighting is over. We may sit down and talk openly, and hide nothing. May we?" Song Chen turned his head and looked at the great head of the mecha before him.
For all the world as though he were meeting the eyes of the man within it.
"We may." Zhao Chen gave him his answer.
It was a great risk; but to get back the sooner, Zhao Chen had a presentiment that the answer he wanted lay with Song Chen.
The warship drew nearer and nearer the communications tower.
It may be Song Chen had guessed rightly after all, and the enemy was bent upon taking Song Chen alive.
For they had never once fired upon this Lancer-class Medium Combat Mecha.
But had rather sent out a great number of drones and shuttles, which closed about them.
And did not attack either.
"By the look of it they truly do mean to take you alive," Zhao Chen said with a light laugh.
"Just as we know them, so they will know us. The more so as they work together with those several great houses of the conservative faction. So they lack no gathered intelligence upon me. Not that the losing of me would be so extravagant a thing as the end of our Star Alliance universe. But at the least half the powers within the Alliance, and the resources and the technology, are under my control. The technology of the White Rose Military-Industrial Group alone is a thing they want very much. Take me, and they have their chance at that technology." Song Chen laughed at his own expense.
And then looked at the shuttles and drones coming nearer and nearer.
"How do you mean to get across?" Song Chen asked.
Crunch.
Zhao Chen did not answer, but the answer was plain enough.
For part of the shell upon the mecha's back and at its feet fell away, and showed the rocket thrusters fitted within.
"I do not care for this sort of thing; it is uncomfortable." Though Song Chen said so, a smile showed at the corner of his mouth all the same.
"Hold fast for yourself. If you come off, I shall not trouble about it," Zhao Chen said calmly.
Song Chen drew a light-blade hilt from his waist, and a blade of golden yellow was roused out of it.
Holding the blade two-handed, Song Chen drove its edge straight into the place of the mecha's shoulder.
And there was confidence in his face.
"Set out."
Zhao Chen, in the cockpit, started every rocket thruster.
Which are gear fitted to this mecha, that may let a mecha fly over short distances.
Roar, roar, roar.
The rocket mouths began giving out flame, and the great shaking of it set the whole communications tower seeming to totter and fall.
And thereupon this Lancer mecha began to run, and its speed grew and grew.
And on reaching the tall building's edge, it sprang with a will.
And like a cannon shell, flew straight at that interstellar warship!